Gummint: Crack down on metahumans, I want total regulation and I want it yesterday!
Umbraxis: HELLO.
Gummint: oh god help
Umbraxis: HELLO.
Gummint: oh god help
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I guess I could just knock out another and wrap it up on my own, but that would feel pretty amazingly weird.
She thrust the torch into the piled timber, keeping as low as she could. The precious orange light diminished into tiny slivers as it disappeared into the kindling, long shadows beginning to dance across the churned grasses and looming trees. Smoke curled unhurried from between the kindling, and something heavy shifted semicircle in the darkness, cracking slowly over fallen boughs and wet bracken, the wood quivering with a low, guttural growl.
Loka cursed herself for not keeping the carriage-driver's liquor when she had the chance. Urgent and impatient, she found the fire's heart, coaxing it up with an old gesture, the wood hissing and popping as it caught alight. The burning glow spread quickly, the flames leaping and illuminating the treetops as the heaped timber grew rapidly into a crackling bonfire, and in the shadows of the mist-filled wood, two round, mad pinpricks of flame reflected back at them. The growl sounded again, and they grew larger, nearer, gathering speed as the forest echoed with the din of tearing undergrowth, fleeing animals and shattering wood.
Loka cursed herself for not keeping the carriage-driver's liquor when she had the chance. Urgent and impatient, she found the fire's heart, coaxing it up with an old gesture, the wood hissing and popping as it caught alight. The burning glow spread quickly, the flames leaping and illuminating the treetops as the heaped timber grew rapidly into a crackling bonfire, and in the shadows of the mist-filled wood, two round, mad pinpricks of flame reflected back at them. The growl sounded again, and they grew larger, nearer, gathering speed as the forest echoed with the din of tearing undergrowth, fleeing animals and shattering wood.
Now that JB is confirmed not-dead, I can in return confirm that I have a cunnin' plan for how to sneak Gobskag into any foreign clime necessary.
The stench of the creature's lair had grown thicker as they stalked through the black wood, unable to see more than a few feet in any direction. The waft of rotten meat, the pang of stale urine, a heavy miasma of tortured sweat and the rich, hungry scent of human blood all choked her by degrees, growing unbearable as the Inquisitor drew them to the entrance and they were at last able to see inside. Torn skin. Rancid disembodied limbs. The scuttling of a thousand crawling insects. It was too much. She doubled up with a wet, noxious gurgle, hanging onto Gregor's back, her stomach heaving. She heard him curse, searching the wood with urgent, paranoid alertness, and she straightened up, coughing tightly, breathing through her mouth and darting her fearful eyes across the stark, threatening blackness. A branch snapped somewhere in the dark and she flinched. The presence of the unseen, unknown beast stalking them was as palpable as the senseless fear of a child's nightmare.
"Wood," she gasped, looking around quickly, "A fire. Better we can see."
"Wood," she gasped, looking around quickly, "A fire. Better we can see."
*Chants* Tra-ge-dy, Tra-ge-dy, Tra-ge-dy, Tra-ge-dy
This is more or less exactly what I've come to expect from God.
Stealth insert -- and I didn't even take stealth.
Ysobel of Demdyke
The Red Virgin, The Kettle Knight
19 ♦ Female ♦ Herald
Appearance
Ysobel is a short, stocky girl with a lion's portion of Scottish blood and dirty red hair trimmed into a simple pageboy cut. Her face is round and honest, her rosy cheeks dusted with freckles, and her eyes shine bright and green. Though her sex is unmistakable even at a glance, she has somewhat of a boyish look to her, as girls who follow in the pursuits of men are often wont to have.
She wears a thick, heavy suit of black iron armor that resembles some outlandish furnace more than it does a garment of war, wrapped with red fabric at its waist and a wolf-pelt thick around her neck, padding its heavy, pot-rimmed pauldrons and dangling down her back. The gauntlets and greaves are overlong and jut out significantly, and the whole thing seems to be cobbled together from reforged kitchen scraps.
She wears a thick, heavy suit of black iron armor that resembles some outlandish furnace more than it does a garment of war, wrapped with red fabric at its waist and a wolf-pelt thick around her neck, padding its heavy, pot-rimmed pauldrons and dangling down her back. The gauntlets and greaves are overlong and jut out significantly, and the whole thing seems to be cobbled together from reforged kitchen scraps.
Background
Ysobel of Demdyke was a shepherd girl of no high birth or consequence, raised to love Christ, speak truly and keep chaste. Though she never ventured far from the woodland moor of her village, she raised herself on myth, story and legend, tales of martial valor and courtly love, holding it all as her highest ideal.
Sturdy of body, pure of heart and determined in mind, she drove off wolves and thieves, and stood firm against the trickery of forest spirits. Yet as the Saxons pushed in, brutality and brigandry were rampant. Many able boys and men were killed or pressed into banditry themselves. Sheep were taken, food grew scarce, men bickered and turned to wickedness, averting their eyes from God. The villages of the wold were ground constantly underfoot by some misfortune or misery, and Ysobel's prayers, like everyone else's, seemed to go unanswered.
As things were at their darkest, Ysobel experienced a revelation. She would become God's answer to her people's prayers, and her own. She would live the stories she had loved all her life and make of herself the wode's protector.
She took this resolution to the blacksmith, an aged and little-used man whose crooked back prevented him from fighting himself, or even smithing in excess of his dwindling vitality. He thought the girl mad, but his heart moved at her selfless courage nonetheless, and he agreed to aid her, ashamed that he could not do battle himself.
There was not enough iron left in the village to forge arms and armor, and so Ysobel set about collecting whatever scraps she could: kettles, cauldrons, pieces of crude stoves, molding and hammering them under the smith's guidance into something that would function as plate and helm. She took wood from the destroyed chapel for her shield, along with a miraculously unburned length of deep red altar-cloth to wear about her hips as a half-tabard. Lacking the know-how to forge a sword, she took up a heavy weighted mace, as simple as the rest of her armaments. And at last it was complete: A heavy, ungainly suit of black iron, its humble origins visible in its make.
In songs, they claim the old man tempered the metal with his tears.
She rode on a pony to bier's bridge and at its midst stood her ground night and day, challenging all who thought to cross and claiming that only those with the mandate of God and country might bear the strength to move her. High words for scarce more than a girlchild clad in fat, battered old cauldrons -- and yet... she turned them back. One after another, two or three at a time if they could squeeze themselves that many abreast. She weathered stones, arrowshot and a rain of swords, vicious curses and heated promises of rapine and death, and still she stood her ground, smashing a man into the river here, shattering a helm there, even unhorsing a Saxon band who thought to simply run her down. As more and more tried and more and more failed, it seemed she truly was wholly immovable. Word of the Kettle Knight spread, and so too did the determination to overcome her and her damnable arrogance, and claim whatever it was she guarded.
It was only when Arthur himself rode to the bridge and challenged her that her vigil was finally ended. They strove against each other until night turned to dawn, and at last Ysobel was exhausted, begging tearfully, "Who art thou to undo me whenst a hundred men could not?" Whereupon the King revealed himself with noble words and holy bearing, and the girl's sorrow turned to joy. The Kettle Kight dropped to her knees and swore herself eagerly to the true-born king of Britannia, joining his war as herald and banner-bearer; for the horns rang loudest at her lips, and the standard would never fall while she held it.
Sturdy of body, pure of heart and determined in mind, she drove off wolves and thieves, and stood firm against the trickery of forest spirits. Yet as the Saxons pushed in, brutality and brigandry were rampant. Many able boys and men were killed or pressed into banditry themselves. Sheep were taken, food grew scarce, men bickered and turned to wickedness, averting their eyes from God. The villages of the wold were ground constantly underfoot by some misfortune or misery, and Ysobel's prayers, like everyone else's, seemed to go unanswered.
As things were at their darkest, Ysobel experienced a revelation. She would become God's answer to her people's prayers, and her own. She would live the stories she had loved all her life and make of herself the wode's protector.
She took this resolution to the blacksmith, an aged and little-used man whose crooked back prevented him from fighting himself, or even smithing in excess of his dwindling vitality. He thought the girl mad, but his heart moved at her selfless courage nonetheless, and he agreed to aid her, ashamed that he could not do battle himself.
There was not enough iron left in the village to forge arms and armor, and so Ysobel set about collecting whatever scraps she could: kettles, cauldrons, pieces of crude stoves, molding and hammering them under the smith's guidance into something that would function as plate and helm. She took wood from the destroyed chapel for her shield, along with a miraculously unburned length of deep red altar-cloth to wear about her hips as a half-tabard. Lacking the know-how to forge a sword, she took up a heavy weighted mace, as simple as the rest of her armaments. And at last it was complete: A heavy, ungainly suit of black iron, its humble origins visible in its make.
In songs, they claim the old man tempered the metal with his tears.
She rode on a pony to bier's bridge and at its midst stood her ground night and day, challenging all who thought to cross and claiming that only those with the mandate of God and country might bear the strength to move her. High words for scarce more than a girlchild clad in fat, battered old cauldrons -- and yet... she turned them back. One after another, two or three at a time if they could squeeze themselves that many abreast. She weathered stones, arrowshot and a rain of swords, vicious curses and heated promises of rapine and death, and still she stood her ground, smashing a man into the river here, shattering a helm there, even unhorsing a Saxon band who thought to simply run her down. As more and more tried and more and more failed, it seemed she truly was wholly immovable. Word of the Kettle Knight spread, and so too did the determination to overcome her and her damnable arrogance, and claim whatever it was she guarded.
It was only when Arthur himself rode to the bridge and challenged her that her vigil was finally ended. They strove against each other until night turned to dawn, and at last Ysobel was exhausted, begging tearfully, "Who art thou to undo me whenst a hundred men could not?" Whereupon the King revealed himself with noble words and holy bearing, and the girl's sorrow turned to joy. The Kettle Kight dropped to her knees and swore herself eagerly to the true-born king of Britannia, joining his war as herald and banner-bearer; for the horns rang loudest at her lips, and the standard would never fall while she held it.
Traits of Avalon
∞-The Bear’s Fortitude: The crude, blackened iron armor of the Kettle Knight has never been penetrated or bent. Legend amongst the commonfolk has it her faith makes it invincible; the same legend claiming it would crack like an acorn should she ever doubt. And though lacking the speed and grace of some of her peers, the weight of her attire and the strength of her conviction gives Ysobel tremendous momentum and force. Lances break like twigs against her shield and even the strongest opponent may find themselves on their back at the brunt of her charge.
∞-The Lion’s Roar: Holy purpose shines from the Kettle Knight's countenance and the humility of Christ is visible in her simple, makeshift armor. To raise one's hand against the red virgin is to curse God, and all who behold her know it.
Loka forced herself to steady her breathing, drinking deeply of the cold, throat-numbing forest air and trying to stay upwind of the redolent torch-smoke which threatened to blot out everything else.
Yes, there was blood, thick and heavy, but it was to one side, and nearer than it should be -- Ah. The bodies on the road, of course, laced with a thin, lingering trace of old fear. The inquisitor had surely been right. Whatever had befallen them, they had not been prepared for it.
"I.. cannot say." she whispered apologetically, "But... There is something. That way." She pointed past him, through the torchlight. "Something different. Not belonging."
Yes, there was blood, thick and heavy, but it was to one side, and nearer than it should be -- Ah. The bodies on the road, of course, laced with a thin, lingering trace of old fear. The inquisitor had surely been right. Whatever had befallen them, they had not been prepared for it.
"I.. cannot say." she whispered apologetically, "But... There is something. That way." She pointed past him, through the torchlight. "Something different. Not belonging."
"Yes!" she hissed back, still huddling close despite a sudden backlash of resentment at the Inquisitor's anger, "Yes, I can smell them, and all the trees they have pissed on -- It is unpleasant, by the way! I do not know how far. I do not know if one is the... thing." She pointed, following the thin, billowing trails, nearly invisible in the dark swell of fog. "There, there, there and there."
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