Culluket

Mass Effect: Brink

"Omus Vol? That walking trashcan?" There was a high-pitched ring as Errol put a sniper round through the inch-wide gap between Declan's ear and his skull, taking out a Vorcha's eye from 500 meters right as the ugly son of a bitch was leveling its rocket launcher. "Hell with this, I should've stayed in the goddamned bar. Don't think this is over, Declan! You OWE me! I'm not letting you out of my sight til I get paid!"

The Grim Crusade [Warhammer 30,000 RP]

*A SHINY NEW BIONIK KLAW TA THE LAD WOT BRINGS ME DA MOST POSTS!*
--Novelty head of Rokk KillKrazy

Rain's Hand [ Culluket x Hank ]

She watched him as he spoke, hands pressed together, her head cocked, her eyes narrowing, the corners of her mouth turning down by slow degrees. The sword didn't intimidate her. Yes, she had no doubt he would kill her and feel nothing at all, but the weight of the unknown world above her was enough to smother any hope of rebellion.

Yes, she thought, yes I understand, Gregor Ravenor Nykerius, I understand better than you think and once you would be cut in two and fed to wild dogs simply for looking at me in that way but here I am in this hungry tomb a thousand miles from freedom and the only path I might take is upon your leash, you who hate me and would sooner see me dead. I wonder what kind of man you are, beneath that bleak mask. I wonder what manner of people do battle in this way, like thieves in the night, skulking amidst their own kind. Come then, master and foe; but have a care should you stare long into the sun.

The thoughts were hot coals, and she swallowed them in silence. In the end, she only nodded, bitterly, and stood on her cramped, aching legs.

Rain's Hand [ Culluket x Hank ]

The Koptic priestess sat hunched in on herself as they forced her into the chair, twisting her hands together compulsively in her lap and trying to keep them from trembling. Beauty and dignity now seemed so very far away, barely a half-remembered dream. The black cells were like a realm of their own, cut off from the surface, echoing with lunatic wailing, a dark, sunless abyss into which souls were cast, and lost forever. The men of the Empire had created a plane of living nightmares, and hidden it beneath their proudest city.

Loka understood now why the Imperial church did not need a Hell. They had built one of their own.

There was the thick, muffled sound of doors opening and closing, muted voices, indistinct, laced with veiled aggression. Loka shifted uneasily in the sparse chair. The hiss of her own breathing filled her black little world.

She spat a lock of hair from her mouth as the suffocating bag was finally drawn from her head. Her face was drawn, skin glistening with sweat, and her eyes flicked rapidly around the candlelit chamber, coming to rest again and again on the hard-faced stranger in front of her. He was frustrated. Angry. Well. Perhaps she would be angry too, once she could keep from pissing herself.

He spoke, in the tone of a man trying to mitigate a disaster. She blinked, quickly, candlelight dancing in her dark eyes. The question was so out of place, so different from the other interrogations, that it caught her off-balance.

"...I am Deva Loka of Irem Kopt," she said at last, her chest rising and falling heavily, "I have fourteen brothers. When I was young, I wanted to be a dancer. I like spiced milk, honeyed bread and not being tortured."

She leaned forward, lowering her voice to a strained, musical whisper.

"Why am I here? They talk, about 'redemption', but I hear 'politics.' They tell you to 'use' me, why do I feel, it is you who is being used?" Her eyes dropped to her white-knuckled hands. "I do not understand this. But. Please. Do not send me back to that place."

She took a long, uneven breath.

"It is evil."

Rain's Hand [ Culluket x Hank ]

Loka Meissa ar-Raqis was a native of Irem Kopt in the opal expanse, an ancient and little-understood city surrounded by a vast sandstone maze within the grey area of what the empire possesses and what it still desires. It is a strategic linchpin, guarding both the untrod lands to the south and holding a port beside the bay of drowned ghosts. Its people are a mishmash of cultures left from old invasions, and it has no official religion, instead supporting an indefinite number of competing cults and allowing the most effective to survive. Many have tried to take Kopt. But the only certainty in the desert is that no one holds the Labyrinth City for long.

Loka is a Deva, or priestess, of the Peacock God, an astral outsider (Shanin) deity that the Imperial church officially denies the existence of. Though considered divine agents by the people of the Amber Sea, being able to manifest unearthly power that sets them apart from other would-be contenders, the Deva are more akin to pact-bound warlocks, tapping the fire of the stars through things no one fully understands. She begins this bleak new chapter of her life in the hands of the Imperial Church, condemned as an insurgent, a sorceress and an idol worshiper after being quietly abducted as a secret 'prisoner of war' from the aftermath of one of the desert's regular border skirmishes, in which no other prisoners were taken, and no other witnesses were left alive.

Loka is a brown-skinned young woman with shoulder-length dark hair, high-cheekboned, angular and nondescript when not wearing an hour's worth of southern cosmetics and hairclasps. Her king's ransom in colorful, opulent garments has been forcibly traded for a short, dull burnt-umber robe and a functional oiled-leather riding ensemble much like that worn by her new handler, and though it keeps the fog and rain at bay, she frequently wonders whether it would have been preferable to choose death than endure the enervating lack of color.

---

Cult Quirks: Humans were not meant to deal too closely with Greater Shanin, even nominally benevolent ones like the Peacock God, and the women of the Opaline Temple slowly change the longer they serve and the nearer they draw to that awful and magnificent presence. These changes range from sensory distortion, to mania and insanity, to actual physical mutation in higher ranks. These are the effects we know of in Loka, so far:

• Overloaded senses -- Common amongst Peacock Deva, though degrees vary. The priestesses feel and perceive things more acutely, and in greater depth and texture than normal humans. This can sometimes work against them when the limits of what their minds can handle is exceeded.
• Synesthesia -- Common to Peacock Deva and regarded as a mark of the God's power. As the senses of the Peacock women exceed their boundaries, they bleed into one another, and input into one sense can result in feedback from another. Loka can perceive scent trails as colors, taste the emotions of those around her and observe patterns where none are otherwise visible through a strange association of sensory feedback with objects or events.
• Emotional Whiplash -- Angry one minute, laughing the next. Loka's mood twists like a feather in a hurricane.
• Selective Kleptomania -- "Koptic whore! Is your God a peacock or a magpie?"
  Sometimes Loka needs things, or thinks she should have them. Perhaps she even feels she deserves them, or that they technically belong to her even if their owners haven't yet been informed. Whatever the case, the compulsion to take them is irresistible. This was never a problem in Kopt, where the strongest Temples have authority to do things like this and the Deva's word was as close to law as the city ever gets. In many cases having an offering taken by a ruling temple was even considered an honor, and good luck. In Montegarde, however, things are somewhat different...

Mass Effect: Brink

Also, when you drop in, you guys can narrate Vol's (nervous) door guards any way you like, if that helps grease the wheels.

Credit Karad,

@Howler

Let sleeping dogs lie.

@Austronaut, if this isn't the reason, feel free to retcon it so that it is.

Let sleeping dogs lie.

Thass why iss so cunnin', boss! Hneehh, iss da last fing dey'd expect.

Hell, Biancca probably just wants a yacht and figured this was a good way of making the client pay for it.

Let sleeping dogs lie.

Anyone have any ideas for where they want to take this game?

@Maxwell

Short-term, given that Biancca has just suggested we'll need a ship, that seems like a smooth way to meet up with the ogre sailor and get him on the payroll.

Mass Effect: Brink

Made a post just because.