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    1. Divinity 9 yrs ago

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9 yrs ago
Current A warm fire place, milk tea, and reading old RP'S at five AM. Good Morning, RPG.~
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@thewizardguy

~No fair! It's another one of those, Ishtalle.~

<Yes. But you have many ways of dealing with it. Adapt.>

Fair enough. Corban was slightly irritated, but not surprised that the enemy had a super healing factor. This was not the first time he had faced one of those. Far from it, in fact. It distinctly brought to mind the last person he faced with a similar ability - the guyver. Though in his case it was a living powered armor macroorganism that functioned like a microorganism armed to the teeth with death cannons aplenty. He'd deal with her in the same way he dealt with him.

~What did you glean from it? I dont think a simple cut will work.~

<Not enough. I'll need to feel her to properly align myself. What have you learned?>

~A lot. I've learned that she doesn't rely on natural shadow to cast them. The sun is high and there aren't trees to cast shade for miles, and the base has been reduced to sunders.~ he began. ~Not to mention how she summoned one from thin air behind me earlier. I've learned of her regenerating factor, and we can deal with that sure enough. Knowledge is power, right?~

<Right.>

Then Darquesse fleeted within the earth, and the mage wasn't fooled for a second out of thinking what she was going to do. She would, like many others who realized Corban would not be moved in close quarters, strafe-fired. Why did they always strafe fire? She would come to find out that the Guardian was at his most dangerous when he stood his ground. While annoying, the payoff was that Corban had gotten supernaly efficient at catching birds in the sky. Or, er, in this case ground.

When she shot her lance of shadow to impale the crimson eyed doctor-mage, he'd pivot on the front of his heel as it passed by with corban spinning just enough out of its path for it to glance -but not cut or pierce- the glittering cloth of his left shoulder. Such was the defense provided by diamond flecks and graphene under layers.

This is where he would trap the bird.

Corban did not need his hands to channel his magic. Enough practice and ingenuity and ones entire body becomes a casting catalyst. Upon physical touch, and in a speed that could dazzle Zeus' bolts, man and blade performed a two-part circuit. Corban raised his blade just out in front of his chest enough to make contact with the shadow, where its first hidden circle would reveal itself. Dispel. Just as Corban learned from Ishtalle, so too did she pick up tricks from him. In the same moment Ishtalle used his body as a conduit to channel a neurological lock-down shock that manifested in a spark of tourmaline yellow. Paralyze.

her spire would be dispelled and used like an electrical wire, channeling the spell not quite as fast as a lightning bolt, but surely not a mile slower along the magical trail like electricity through a circuit, converging upon the woman.

Now for her cage.

Given she was sandwiched between possibly hundreds of pounds of raw carboniferous material(and he had a bead on her by interacting with her shadow), Corban could act even faster and make the crystal prison even denser. It formed around her quickly like a coccoon, several feet thick and completely eutactic. Since she should be stiffer than a mannequin, there would be little hope of escape.

The bubble metal matured in his hand and the once semi-often reflective glints on the wind were now buried inscrutably beneath several inches of soil amongst the chaos. Meanwhile, the shedded metal particles of his Flinch had begun to coalesce around the arm containing the bubble metal. If she was toying with him, shed quickly realize she would be outlasted. Corban had not even drawn his real sword, yet.

Ishtalle blushed. Well, as much as a crystal sword could.
@Divinity
Yo, you should move your character to the Characters tab. He's on page 29.


Yeah I'll do it after this post.
@thewizardguy

She was wrong, in fact, but still close.

Corban was not aware of her magical sight, but he pre-empted it; It was incredibly rare that one who absorbed themselves into the arcane would not at least recognize its various flows and states. Experience simply made Corban cautious. Speaking of which, he had also pre-empted that it would have no effect on her. However, for different reasons than the truth.

It was part of his profession and a result of his experience that made him so unnaturally attuned to magic and the complexities and nuances of its principles. This of course extended to free magic. He was more than prepared for her shadow blast.

In fact, he counted on it.

Wide blasts were powerful, but unfocused. With their spread came a simpler diffusion. Speak of wasted energy, sheesh! Just as the viscous shade would bubble and froth forth, two four-foot thick slabs of blue-crusted earth would snake up before and behind him at 135 degree angles in a pyramidal tent shape.
Corban bent low so as to be beneath them when the blast would meet his bulwark.

BOOM!

As blast would meet wall the former would be deflected upward by the shield's angle... But not before a violent explosion would meet the she-mage in the face at point-blank range. Except Corban's explosion was precise. Something hard to achieve with those pesky things.

Call it fate or divine decree, but Corban held total dominion over carbon. Go figure. The carbon rich earth that acted as his shield metabolized the energy erupting from their interaction to facilitate a transmutation, converting the first several layers into diamond-loaded octanitrocubane. Which happens to be the most powerful non-nuclear explosive known to man. The blast would plume outward, though not disseminating into a wide arc, but instead was channeled into a focused wave-beam shape that hid (now)superheated, magically insulated crystals. It would shear and blast the woman, and probably several yards of earth behind her into a quite unseenly mess.

He had effectively used her blast to the face to make an even larger blast to her face! If she still was back there gloating, Corban sure couldn't hear it over the sound of of his molecular beam-buckshot.

As steaming shells collapsed back to the earth the mage would rise from it, leaping backward several yards as he shed the carbon-ore from his flesh all the while into miniscule particulates. His hand still bled evermore bubble-metal.
@thewizardguy I'm fine with it either way. I counted on it not working. As for the mechanics of it, I'm not too sure on. It was still light, even if metaphysical, and her ability to see/sense magic should have experienced some sort of overload if not visual. But if those are the rules you use then so be it. My post will be up in the next five minutes.
@NightknightWill do.

@Thewizardguy Just curious, as I dont really see anything on the sheet. But how exactly is Darquesse capable of ignoring a 20k+ lumen flash when it says that seeing magic is one of her prime abilities? I mean there is the defense that she could switch it off, but I see no reason she'd be prompted to do that, or how she'd do it fast enough to escape, and it doesn't exactly seem to imply that's what happened in the post.
Corban







It was rare, as experience would tell, that Corban was ever wrong. From the looks of It, it seemed the castress was more than eager to continue his streak on two fronts. The first was the dichotomy between sigils and free energy. Using free magic is arguably, on a magical scale almost always more potent than all but the most mathematically perfect sigils by virtue of their nature. This also means that using free magic was like firing guns -one may not outright be able to find the source of the bullet, but they'd know that a gunman was there, and even if he had a silencer, a talented mathematician could locate him via entry wound-trajectory- Sigil's however, were the equivalent of a blade's sheathe. The blade is contained within and never seen on the outside. Corban's choice of 'sheathe' (the aphotic blade) would all but leave her ignorant of the sigil's etched along the spine. What she would instead see is light being siphoned into the blade as a whole as opposed to fixed points along the edge. If she wanted to find out what was up with his fancy sword, she'd have to see it up close.

Secondly, as he had thought, she was a spell-blaster, and like he assumed earlier, she'd rely on the speed of her draw. But gun dueling was more a matter of foresight and aim than raw speed. Well, speed helps, but not much against Corban.

As the bolts of hard-shadow neared him, he recalled several other encounters he had with a group of necromancers just a few years prior. It may have been a while, but he distinctly remembered them employing similar tactics. The old 'shadow behind the back' trick was as common as the 'Control one's own shadow' among practitioners of shadow-magic. He wasn't sure how polymorphic her use of the darkness was, but that could be discovered a la trial by fire. With the hard part over, all that was left to do was decide how to deal with it!

Dynamic - Move: A simple enough solution. Avoid damage zones entirely instead of rushing through them or standing directly against them. At least when the properties of a spell are not properly gleaned. However, this left room for counter-attacks like rapid-directionally-shifting flechettes. Mages had a bad knack of doing that.

Static - Stand: Rather than give up defensive positioning for speed, this suggests sacrificing mobility for defense. However, against loaded weapons, this could be turned against one who isnt careful. Luckily Corban was the epitome of 'careful'.

???: There was still the option of doing neither.


He may not have been the fastest, but he didn't need to be. Fortresses rarely moved anyway, but when they they did.... They'd move like.... Well. Moving fortresses. Why choose one when he could use both?

"Dispel."

He said for no particular reason just as the flying shadows would gorge upon him. A shock emanated out from what seemed to be him as the epicenter, unraveling the shadows coherency as they passed through. Simultaneously, his skin Flinched as a coating of organic metal covered his body. The components came together quite nicely into a triple-chain railgun-flare-slidestep that would close the distance between them like a cheetah closes distance with a turtle.... Thats about twenty feet away.

A series of magical flares and feints were discharged that wouldn't so much take away preternatural sight as it would make having it a hindrance. In the mundane world, not a single thing changed. However, in the steeps of the arcane, it registered as a flash of light easily topping at over 20k lumens. Luckily for him, Corban didn't need to see to do what he needed.

If she could see at all after that sudden blast of light, Corban would be nowhere in front of her any longer. Between his zone of silence and the magical super-flare, he'd be positioned several feet behind her silently. Two-hands gripped hilt as he furls out of a lowering spin that would bring his edge to cross her from the top of her right rib to the bottom of her left rib, carrying the full diamond dusted force of the wind behind his strike for greater impact and cutting force. As his hands swung, bubbling metal began to drip from his left hand.

He wondered, how would she fit the fancy power-suit if she were literally cut down to size?
@thewizardguyI'm assuming you meant to @ me lol.
And Corban wouldn't have it any other way.
Corban







And lo', the gods would descend a hail of dying stars against the Guardian's bulwark of sturdy and immaculate stones few jewel cutters could ever hope to emulate, but made of slightly lesser stuff than the hail of bolts of a thunder god's proportions. Or if they weren't made of lesser stuff, Corban leveraged it well. The structure became concave and flexed in metaphysical despair as an invisible flash of lightning foretold a half-transmutation as the core of the barrier plumed outward, and the rest of the shell collapsed into smaller and larger particles that blew this way and that in fleeting winds of obsolescence. Corban pocketed the remaining two diamonds for now.

"Hm. Not quite the welcome party I would have hoped for."

<Were you expecting a red carpet?>

"Not quite. But a grenade to a new neighbor's face? Those are just bad manners."

<Mannerisms are taught through generations. Blame the parents. Not the children.>

"Fair enough. But where's the mother?"

<Incoming.>

As man and blade ended their colloquy of minds, the witch beveled out of her flight and landed just a few yards away. She first addressed the woman who's company the mage had just rescued, spitting vast boasts and threats. This Corban was used to. He was not, however, quite as used to being praised as he was of others praising themselves. So he was taken aback for only an infinitesimally small moment by the comment, only to be ran afoul by her followup comment. Had he not been who he was, it might have hurt his feelings. This is not to be confused with ignorance: Corban was aware all of his adversaries secretly admired him! He just wasn't used to them admittting it. His response was a simple one.

"Challenge accepted."

It seemed this mage thought she'd be the the one to bring down Saezar. She surely wouldn't have been the first with that onus. And if Ishtalle had anything to do with it, she surely wouldn't be the last. Though for now, he contained her immaculate form in her far-less-than-maculate black sheathe. He then turned his attention to the flittering hologram, and for a split moment hovered mentally over the inner circuitry before responding.

"It was nothing, honest." he began. "But id be careful about thanking me just yet. Eggs before they hatch, right?" his eyes once again met with the she-mage's, though when he spoke again it was still to Alexandria. "But I must ask that you let me handle this one. Alone. It's a mage thing. If you must participate then you're in a prime position to suppress-fire."

In most battles of mages, it generally came down to superior positioning, and who had the faster draw. In close quarter combat it came down, ultimately, to kinaeshesia and conservation and expenditure of momentum. Its why spell casting is the mystic equivalent of gun-slinging. Corban straddled the fence, but was even more dangerous up close than most life-devoted warriors. He planned to show why.

From within her sheathe Ishtalle's multi-layered mirror flat-side cycled through a seemingly endless laundry list of runic arrays, strange materials, and various-complexity spell-circles that showed in her reflection like looking at a painting through a sheet of ice. It revolved like a gun-barrel until it found its chosen chamber with the appropriate 'bullet'. There would be no flex of magical might and no tells from the mage. This was no activation. He was merely fumbling with change, not making a purchase. Most of all, he was a professional, and every professional, regardless of vocation could appreciate the concept of discrepancy.

"Now that I've bought us some alone time..." his hand rapped in a theatric twirl, bleeding onyx-grey that quickly perfected itself into a perfect crystal lattice. The complex folds and cuts were the likes of those beyond the craftsmanship of any smith or artificer, and it took the form of an incredibly long(6 feet to the blade, 2 to the hilt), slender great-katana. Its surface was aphotic black, and running along the spine are three equally black runes carved half of 1/16 inch deep.

Like Ishtalle's own reservoir(but limitlessly limited by comparison), these would give off no energy, though unlike Ishtalle, whom's systems were energy neutral, this was endoenergetic. In this sense, it became a black box. One may see what goes in(ambient light, but this would be negated as a viable means of spell-detection by the blades aphotic nature anyway), but has no idea how that related to what would come out, nor what actually happened within in the first place.

The left foot slid forward, and knees were bent by a slight gradient. Reinforced center of mass, positioned with both hands on the hilt of the sword, held in front of his chest with curved blade tip pointed horizontally.

"Who makes the first move, sweetcheecks?"

Grandiloquent avowals aside, The guardian was legitimately curious.

Sorry for the wait. I should have a post up shortly. Though since I've missed a bit I'll be backtracking in my post starting from just after Corban's arrival. This makes posting a little more time-consuming as I have more material to reference.

*Elevator music ensues.*
Corban



Eldritch IV, Edge of the Battlefield





Just as the Guardian was prepared to answer the first volley of questions from the bot, he prematurely, or at full maturity depending on what kind of philosophy of life one had, discharged his weapon in a magnificent blast of ionized oxygen that split the wind and bled ozone. It evaporated a clear and clean path of superheated stone, metal and earth before striking its mark; a large control tower built upon the edge of the bases 90 degree angle, classic siege style that would rattle the bottle with enough energy to gather the attention of anyone who was lucky enough to not be charred to death.

How about that? Corban happened to need a solar furnace, and upon closer inspection of the material comprising the bot's blaster-arm-combo, it'd serve as something close enough. Though something still bothered him. He wanted to see inside the contraption and artifice what made it tick.

Corban was equal parts curious and disappointed. Curiosity was his forte, and as soon as the Bot discharged his eyes had beset upon the beam. Dissecting it and edifying it as it passed. He was disappointed, because the Bot seemed to not have realized that Corban's earlier comment was in fact a challenge to him. It almost could elicit a tear, he not being able to experience the blast firsthand.

"Did you see that, Ishtalle!?" he exclaimed across a telapathic channel.

<I did.>

"Well we clearly must have done something right by the gods to have ended up here. I mean, if that's not divine, then what is?"

<Me.>

"Tch. Women." he started aloudly.

"Where do I come from? Hmm." Corban was now addressing the Bot directly, a thoughtful index finger curled to his chin so joint met bone. "It depends on how you'd quantify a 'where'. But that's hardly important, now. What's important is that we're here. And...." Corban is intricately connected to magic. Both in physiology and in metaphysicality. He could feel it thrum and vibrate like a sine wave, and naturally the more superflous and exotic the source, the brighter it shined. Corban was practically staring into headlights. Albeit very dim headlights.

"I sense other magical presences over that way." he pointed toward where the two magi in arms a few meters away were prior to the blast. "Maybe I can find a caster who is better at transmuting cotton candy from catalystic glucose than me!" he didn't mean that, primarily because he doubted there was any transmuter as talented as he. Therefore, if he couldn't make cotton candy than no one could! It made absolute empiric sense! Secondarily, he said that because he was telling a half-truth. He was determined to see the Bot in action, whether it be against him or others.

That said, the half-truth lies in that Corban was aware of far more than just the simple presence of magical force, but innately understood its nature. One exceedingly dark. Perhaps extraplanar even. The other had threads that seemed similar to the metaphysical expression for arcane algorithms generally revolving around conjuration. Corban wasn't sure if they were hostile, yet, and so his devious plan to see the robot in action still had an x-factor. But Corban would find that out soon enough.

With a heave, the Earth mage would leap five feet or so into the air. When gravity should have started to drag him back down, he instead stood there like a floating statue! Or at least it would look like he was floating. The genius was in the simplicity of his air platform. Air was naturally abundant, and its properties were easy enough to transmute even without the degree of geoscopic rotational knowledge that dedicated wind-mages might have had. Then he was gone, tracing the same path as the scar of earth that stretched from him to the base.

By the time he arrived, he would have been in the clear firing path of the she-mage (witch was such a harsh word to the Guardian), acting in line with his profession as a guardian by... well, guarding Alexandria, as it were.

The sonority of his method of applying that guardian aptitude was made apparent in realization. From his pocket he withdrew three 250 carat diamonds, wedged between his fingers. Just as the two would meet at an almost 90 degree angle, the air surrounding Corban's hands and boots grew thick and thrummed like the low hum of a bird. Sounded kind of like electricity. However, there would be no bright flash of fullmetal-lightning heralding the transmutation. His hands and boots were silently, unceremoniously now coated in a thick layer of graphene, fullerenes aligning as the material molded.

"Hold It!" At the same time, he released one of the eutectic diamond jewels which immediately stretched and morphed into the most expensive, thin body-shield ever produced. It bore a light curvature that would better displace force and projectiles should the she-mage decide to attack
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