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    1. Culluket 9 yrs ago

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Jeez thanks for shooting down my Tyranid-Pariah hybrid character before I even had a chance to write it up, JERk! I suppose my wisecracking comedy servo-skull sidekick for Sarpedon's character is out too??

Tempted to go Arch-Militant, have a character in mind already actually, though honestly I think I'd be happy playing just about anything, so it's flexible.
Kolbe quickened his pace when he heard Serona's voice carry from beneath the glistening black shape, careening into the thing hard, enraged, and hauling it with all his strength onto its loathesome back. Its limbs scythed the air mindlessly as the Captain's blade was driven home, yet even then the creature continued to thrash murderously on its back, its foul blood seeping into the hot, flowing dust. Behind them, the walls of the canyon were dripping, flowing, reshaping with a terrible, thunderous noise. Kolbe made a dry, grim noise in his parched throat. Better though the earth was for its extinction, slaying the rod-bearing fiend had bought them far less than he had hoped.

The knight extended his bloodied, mailed hand to the Captain, hauling him up. Supported him on one shoulder, labored breath hissing through his sand-encrusted helm as they dragged themselves toward the King over the undulating waves of terrain.

"This is no Vicenni sorcery." rasped Kolbe, "Is this... What you sought... sire?"

A noise pierced through the thunder of upheaval -- He looked back, bracing his shieldarm, expecting to see a tide of misshapen black bodies surging through the heaving earth behind them. Instead, through the filmy orange haze, he beheld a lone horse, with two riders. One -- incredibly -- bore the colors of Areta, the other...

Hrnn.

--the other conspicuously did not.

Linus limped over the shaking ground to the King's side, flanking him, ready for whatever fresh ordeal the desert had in store for them this time.
Awwww, we posts in heeee!

I figure somebody has to freak out at least a little, and nobly took the duty upon myself.
Devi Rana | Regalia Safehouse | Kali Yuga


Devi was standing, staring, too stunned to even be afraid. The television screen may as well have been showing them the end of the world.

Vivian's Comfort Food, she'd refused with a polite gesture. "Thank you, no, you're very kind. Just... really not hungry right now." And not going to be held even partially responsible when that bag runs out, either, she added silently. She'd stolen a few cautious glances at Hong between swipes across her phone, unable to shake the impression that the woman was noticing her do it, peripherally, each time. Watching her back with some invisible sense. Some half remembered caution about staring into an abyss stirred at the back of her memory.

There were other arrivals. The lawyer, as loud in person as she was on the phone, whom she'd mostly spoken to remotely when negotiating some rather indelicate financial requests, and a young woman, unfamiliar, accompanied by an older man whom Devi took an immediate dislike to. It was the way he walked in as though he owned the place.

She'd seen it before.

She'd given him a dark look and gone back to her pensive, circling thoughts.

And the beleaguered Ms Rana had been the only one who hadn't laughed at Mamushi's rapid-fire cracks. She hadn't even smirked. She had only stared at him with awkward concern while he paced and rummaged and talked, and then she'd just... looked away, one foot bobbing nervously in midair. He didn't look well. Well, alright, he looked as though he'd spent the last year floating in a cheap nutrient vat in the bad part of Neo-Tokyo, but it wasn't that; He looked shaken and strung out and regardless of the cocky witticisms that were stumbling a little too quickly out of his mouth, he looked as scared as she felt. Possibly more. And everyone else was just chortling away like this was another day at the office. Was it? Obviously she knew most of these people were far more inured than herself, but really? A sword? Wasn't this more or less the hard-boiled equivalent of their sysadmin? Clandestine activities aside, mortal combat can't have been something he penciled into his calendar.

...What would she have done, if due dilligence hadn't saved her life?

She grimaced to herself. Gone through the window, obviously. What could she have done? All her alleged security had just melted away in the face of her would-be murderers.

As if they'd known.

She had buried herself in her phone, ruminating bitterly on the thought until Quinn spoke. And when he did, she leaned forward, hanging on his words, waiting, yearning for the part where he explained how they were going to rectify this disaster and correct everything.

It never came.




And now she was on her feet, with no memory of having stood up, staring at the same thing everyone else was: John M. Ariella, master and founder of one of the most infamous and feared criminal organizations on the continent, reduced to a damning flatscreen obituary. Beneath the shock and the rapid beating of her overwrought heart, Devi felt a deep, dry emotion flickering in a part of her that had been dormant for years.

It was too far. It was unacceptable.

“I always thought the Crest was a shit club.”

"Fuck off!" Devi's shivering composure exploded like a china teacup. She whirled on the other woman, gesturing to the screen with both hands. "How can you joke about this?" she snapped, "The narcotics smear, the purge, and now this? The Ariella patriarch? Here? Now? An earthquake couldn't do this much damage!" She looked to Quinn, now, appealing to him even though she knew he had no more answers than she did, anger and panic flashing in her eyes. "What was he doing there? Who... could have done this? Don't even try to tell me this is a coincidence!"

She made her way forcefully around to the kitchenette, swinging open cupboards until she found what she was looking for. The brandy was barely in the glass before she was slugging it down, letting it burn in her throat, joining the fire growing inside her. No, it wasn't top-shelf, but here and now she truly wasn't fussy.

Their techspert was thinking out loud, now. That calmed her too, even if she was too dazed to follow half of what he was saying. It was reassuring enough that somebody was thinking at all. And he was right. The sands were running through the glass. And there was a perilous chance this safe house was about to join the growing list of places that weren't very safe at all.

“Or I can fuck off and you run this your way." he finished, awkwardly. "Y’know. Either or.”

Devi half-turned her head, setting the glass down on the counter.

"No." she spoke up, letting out a tense, musical breath. "Until this is over, the only people we can really trust are in this room. Whatever we all may think of the idea, we're in this together. Til the bitter end." her eyes flitted between them, one at a time. "Aren't we?"

She looked back up to the television screen, as though locking eyes with an opponent. Her silk-draped shoulders rose once, then fell.

"...And I want to hurt these people," she said, in a soft, rough voice which left no doubt at all she meant it. "I want us to find whoever's doing this, and I want us to hurt them."
It just occurred to me -- does our company have a name yet, or shall we wait until we have a better idea of who's in it before we sign the official paperwork?
...I tell thee true that I beheld the earth open as if twere a gate into the Stygian underworld, and from that fell and damnable portal of swirlinge sands emergede devils of a lyke I had not yet dreamede. Black as the wytching hour they stood, girded with great, bladed arms like a farmer's scythe, and theyre sere yellow eyes burned evilly with foule intente. Thee foremost amongste them bore a terrible scepter, thee colore of the pitch that no doubt pumped through its repulsive hearte. Of their purpose or origine we knew not. But in the upheavals of the earthe around us, we saw their marke.

Retreat was ordered and this was as the reader will knowe tactically prudent as we were few and faced an unknowne enemy. Our duty -- MY duty -- muste be to protecte thee King at all cost.


A scarlet drop spattered onto the page, a sanguine punctuation mark, slowly soaking into the parchment. The knight frowned, brought the scarred back of his hand to what remained of his nose. It came away ruddy and wet.

He wiped it away, refreshing his quill.

Yet swiftly Captaine Serona was sore beset by two of thee beastes, and verily my hearte ached to leap to his aid, for I saw at once that thee beastes were fierce and alife with malice when roused. Though there be little love between us in that houre, I will admonish thee that it was of no matter as thou shouldst knowe. For he was my brother in arms, and this is a bond that cannot be broken by hard words spoken in wroth, and did duty not make higher demandes of me upon that day, I would gladly have laid down my lyfe despite his mediocrity as a leader and his recurringe weaknesse as a man.

I saw thee one fiende, that whiche wielded a terrible black rod, as a threate which must be purged. Whether it be thee director of these evile gargoyles, or a foule inhuman mage, I felt we woulde have no safety or pease so longe as it lived.

I made my choice.

Maye God judge me fairly when thee hour comes.





The kite shield was on Kolbe's arm almost at once, a smaller, weighted mace lined with brutal ridges in his other hand. He kept himself between the creatures and the King, circling left and right.

"The horse!" he bellowed raggedly from beneath the returned helm, "Sire! Mount and fall back!"

He was running before he even looked back, shield held at the ready. But not toward the frantic Mr. Hooves. No. He was charging with burning purpose toward the indifferent creature with its dark rod. It stared blankly, clicking its indecipherable devil's tongue. It watched him impassively as more of the creatures heaved themselves from the shifting sands, lurching into his path. Black blades thunked against his shield, a sickening, skittering thud rattling the bones along his arm as he slammed into the creature, forced it back and over, driving it toppling hard into its fellow. One long appendage hooked over the rim as the thing tried to pull itself up, its lower body writhing with tiny limbs like a wriggling nightmare beneath an overturned rock. Kolbe's solleret came down heavy and hard, cracking through chitin and stomping twice into the thing's rancid underbelly, a fountain of gushing ichors staining steel and sand in thick, nauseating resin. The second creature slashed and shrieked, hammering shield and armor. Flailing. Gouging.

"Areta!" came the hoarse scream in response, "Areta and vas Aretaeus!"

The cry echoed for leagues, afire with conviction and zeal. The mace swung upward, connecting with clacking black mandibles, time slowing in his mind as the creature was knocked into a backward sommersault. A sickening arc of fluid gouted a semicircle from the impacted crater that once served as the beast's wretched face.

Kolbe felt a warm sensation along his right side that he knew could only be blood. He clutched at it. A chance blow. Chainmail fell ragged from his shoulder from where the thing's horrid hand had sheared it through.

"Careless." He hissed, pushing himself onward.

His quarry was withdrawing, indifferent to him, seeking what higher ground still remained. Kolbe smashed another of the creatures aside with the flat of his shield, forced his way through the thickening crush of gleaming black bodies pouring from the abyss -- seized the thing's lowest leg with his shieldarm and with a dry roar he heaved. The monster's limbs struggled for puchase in the hard earth, determined to make its way to the lip of the canyon.

There was a slow, cthonic groaning.

Plate and carapace fell in a hiss and roar as the ridge fell away and the beast was dragged from the wall in a full-fledged landslide, a heavy cascade of hot sand and rocky debris that crumbled down into the canyon and the open pit, half-burying Kolbe and the creature under a fist of earth and sending unnumbered arachnoid reinforcements scattering like acorns and tumbling back down into darkness.

The world spun. Kolbe's mace was lost, the kite shield torn from his arm and half buried in a swirl of red and gold dirt. Breath burned in his lungs, winded. Vision darkening. No. No surrender. No respite. No sleep. Fulfill the oath. Get up. Get up. Get up.

Sand poured from ichor-drenched mail, caking against the viscous fluid as he heaved himself to his feet, staggered, fell in a metallic heap atop the fallen thing, the leader. It flailed beneath him, half-trapped by the landslide. Oh, but you see me now, spawn of Sothis. Now you see me in truth--

"Gerald of Antour--"

Kolbe felt his fist go numb to the elbow as it pounded into the creature's eye like an iron hammer, crushing carapace and bursting flesh. The golden orb pulped, spattered against Kolbe's mailed knuckles as he struck again, again, again, one leaden punch after another slamming into the creature's onyx skull and ringing across the warped valley.

"Konrad Falkenberg--"

Blow after blow, slower, deeper each time, shoving the creature further down into the sandy mire.

His ears rang, muscles aching with shock and strain. It took him a moment to realize he was now landing blows upon muddy sand.

The monster's head was a gory stain in a deep hole. One dark appendage wavered slowly in the dirt, like the leg of a crushed roach.

Enough. Enough, now.

He felt himself drag the shield free, something clutched in his other hand. Something black and glistening. He loped back toward the horses as the horizon continued to warp and change, hurrying toward whatever aid he might still give Serona, and the man to whom he had sworn all loyalty, to death and beyond.
Taking out the Undead and Lizardmen, this means Elves, Men, Dwarfs, Ogres, Halflings and plausibly also Greenskins of some form - Hobgoblins are well known for fighting for coin.


If this for real means I can potentially play a goblin then you have yourself another merc. But not no Knoblar squighead or nuffing. A proppa Gob, wiv loads of cunnin' and Great Planz, lotsa courage as long as the fightin' is far enough away, an' wieldin' terrifyin' magicks such as Loosen Da Bowels or Bag Full o' Rats, or cursin' any stunties in da group wiv slugs in dere kit. Hneegh hneegh hneeegh!

Ideally every mission would be a contest between who tries to kill me more, the enemy or the PCs.
And if you leave, we get custody of the moustache.
@Jig The disparate nature of the opening means that there's plenty of ways for anyone who's currently faded out to rejoin the goings-on without so much as a hiccup, and at this stage especially, characters can account for a gap in time more or less any way they please. Personally, I think the more the merrier, so if you're feeling it again, plunge back in. That goes for anyone else who's interested in reappearing, too!
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