Fetzen

Blades of the Blood Coast

Action ? So Lorcan can taunt the enemies with some miserable instant poetry and the others can start shooting!

Winds of Fate - A Thieves' Adventure (Semi-Tabletop)

Skarsat

As the donkey made the cart trundle through the wide and more narrow streets of Guillan, Skarsat spent little attention on the one barrel that had a not so harmless content, but was much more on the lookout for irregularities in the cobblestones beneath. If there was any pothole, any stone that protruded from its neighbours or any gap one of the wheel's could get stuck in suddenly, there could be trouble. He was not worried about provding as much of a comfortable ride as possible towards Neh'miah, but much more about the man banging his head against the barrel and crying out in pain. Such an unusual noise could end not only the thief's but also his very own journey much sooner than acceptable.

Skarsat felt his will to get over with this whole endeavour as efficiently as possible quite renewed given the prospect of returning to Guillan afterwards. Returning to this city meant paying the tavern another visit. Paying the tavern another visit meant quite probably bumping into a certain man. Bumping into that certain man offered the opportunity to rip him apart.

There were a few guards he and the cart passed by unharmed on their way towards the market. It seemed the barrel trick was working out nicely. If only Neh'miah would be able to hold out until the Tork had finished his business which he planned to do. If this market was as big as the whole city, then it was bound to include some goods he could use, too! Skarsat gave the donkey a gentle nudge to move just that bit further that was necessary to get the cart's cargo into the shadow cast by one of the adjacent buildings. Neh'miah moaning due to excessive heat induced by sunlight into an unventilated space was not something Skarsat was looking forward to, either.

Speaking of an unventilated space... Maybe he should have taken the time to just bash a small hole into the barrel while still at the warehouse and to turn the whole thing until it was hidden by the other barrels ? If something was built to hold a liquid, it was not only not ventilated, but outright airtight. That in turn meant he'd have to make a bit of a hurry out of his shopping tour or otherwise their ship would have a corpse on board even before departure...

Therefore, Skarsat decided to make his decision more based on his very first impression. Given this strategy there was one stand that attracted his attention more than any other... It was the large arrangement of bows and even more arrows with not only one, but two people behind the counter who, given that even the female one was rather towering over their average customer, likely were Tork. This initial characterization found confirmation as Skarsat came closer and could make out more details about their faces. Clearly Tork. What a surprise to see a couple of his countrymen and -women here!

The joy was not entirely mutual though, at least if one considered the looks on the male owner's face who darted a not so friendly look towards Skarsat. Was this guy disappointed that he was no longer the biggest bloke around here ? The woman quickly compensated for this by identifying herself as "Aniska" while presenting a big smile.

"Hello! What can we do for you ?" she asked before putting down the arrow tip she had been working on with the grinding wheel.

"Do you have any good bows. For me, I mean ?" Of course they had good bows... even they actually weren't good they'd still claim so because they were merchants who wanted to sell things. Tork were not above bantering, Skarsat knew that. He aimed his view onto the goods hanging from the ceiling and being stacked on the floor as far as he could see it, but also had to divert some observation time towards the cart. It still stood there with all barrels on board. Good...

Aniska looked at Skarsat up and down and then back up from his tremendous thighs to his more than just 'broad' shoulders, then could keep herself from grinning. She leaned against the counter with one hand and let the fist of the other one rest on her hip. "Lark ?" she said in an almost teasing manner. "Do we still have that one thing around you did once ? That bow you couldn't sell to anyone so far?"

"There are many things we couldn't sell so far! Look at the goddamn cart!" it came back from the small workbench in a quite annoyed tone and with a fingerpointing gesture towards the vehicle in question. "I told you more than once already that we shouldn't go back to this fart of a city. There are no good bowmen here!"

Aniska sighed slightly, but only so loud that Skarsat could barely hear it. This time less teasing and more demanding she restated her request: "Not now, Lark! Please! Just give me the one bow this 'fart' of a city's guard was interested in as a makeshift replacement part for one of their stationary installations. We do still have that one around, don't we ?"

A pair of prongoues and a big knife were dumped onto the workbench a little harder than would have been necessary, then Lark proceeded towards the cart while also exhaling a lot louder than necessary. There indeed were still plenty of goods laying around there and that made Lark's task not easier as the item in question appeared to be at the very bottom of the mess. The ruckus he made even made some of the passer-bys turn their heads. Then he returned with... something. Skarsat's eyes widened a bit.

Aniska however had long gotten over her initial concerns about wasting precious resources on something far too oversized for there to ever be any potential users. It had been Lark's idea and luckily he had only instantiated his madness in this way once so far, so the bow he was bringing back to her was one of a kind right now. At least as far as two humble merchants and bowmakers could say that. Having received it from her colleague, she handed it over towards Skarsat. "Draw it. If you can do that, it is yours. 13g and no shittalk around it. You will get a fresh bowstring and some basic care for the wooden parts because the thing is not new anymore, okay ?"

And Skarsat started pulling, and pulling harder,... and pulling even harder until the bowstring started to feel very, very uncomfortable in his hand without thick leather gloves protecting it. As he slowly worked his way towards success even Lark took a brief moment to watch, along with a few other people.

"Well, erm... I'd say give me the coin and the city guard will have to look for spare parts elsewhere. You wouldn't like to see this beauty being abused and slowly rotting away in some crude ballista on a high tower either, woud you ?"

Skarsat put the thing down and eased up his shoulders before reaching into the depths of his pockets. "Does this work for payment too ?" and he pulled out the weird token he had been given from Vargas. The man had said it would work on the market, so hopefully that had been the truth.

"Erm... a crumpled piece of parchment ?" Aniska asked, arching an eyebrow. She shifted her upper body left and right to try and look past the small document that was hiding the actual token from sight. Only then Skarsat realized that he had forgotten to remove and maybe even read that right away when he had received the whole thing. It probably was some less important thing!

"Oh, now I can see! So it appears you're a special one in more than one way. Consider the bow to be yours. Give me a minute or two to make sure it's in proper order. Anything else you need ? Maybe a few arrows that don't limit the drawing weight of your new weapon by being too short ?"

Lark saw the token, too, and the moment he did his mood dramatically worsened up to the point that he took the token they had received from Skarsat and smashed it so hard onto the cobblestone beneath that it actually shattered. Skarsat started reconsidering whether he should just try and revert his decision and to just pay the coin for the Champion's bow ? Maybe Vargas was not paying the local merchants here, but only put pressure on them. Or there was outright blackmailing going on ? Unfortunately there was more than one reason why he did not have the time to dig deeper now. Not only he needed to get onto the boat quickly! And, of course, Lark's decision to break the token instead of just storing it somewhere had made any attempt to revert decisions doomed from the start.

Therefore the Tork's attempts to talk down the price his country people would take for a decent bunch of heavy arrows and a high tensile bow string as a replacement, just should the need arise, were only half-hearted. Needless to mention that while Aniska was much more understanding, Lark was not.

Rolls

Charisma d20+1: 9

Apocalypse Not

I'll start working on Satan.

The Sunday Group - The Flicker Cases

Good luck with the RP everyone.

Apocalypse Not

I'm quite intrigued by this. If I have time I might come and try an application :)

The Sunday Group - The Flicker Cases

Artur Syon

Artur Syon

Appearance:

Concept picture

'Flamboyant red hair' probably is the first thing that comes to the average onlooker's mind upon seeing Artur for the first time. He indeed has got quite the mess of it that reaches well down to his shoulders, but his pretty face is also framed by a well maintained beard of equal color running along his jawline. His eyes are gray and slightly striking, but otherwise there's nothing conspicuous around his head area.

Artur stands at 6'2 with a slightly above-average build and prefers to clad himself in what most people would consider to be an anachronism. He however thinks that a leather trenchcoat with rich decorations depicting flowers or other, more abstract shapes etched onto it is just perfectly fine for getting around casually outside. Since it goes down almost to his feet one hardly notices that at least his pants, a pair of black jeans, are more modern styled. For the everyday office treadmill he has a white shirt with decorations stitched on it, too. He usually wears at least thin cloth gloves, for reasons that are obvious once he doesn't.


Concept:

Artur's mother and her husband were both magically talented individuals, but have kept this a secret from the very beginning. She had realized quite early that magic did by no way mean that all classical human knowledge and explorative efforts were worth any less, so there had never been a reason for her to abandon her highly respected researcher's position at an advanced physics institute. She could merely not dare to talk about her supernatural touch with any of her colleagues for it would likely have been interpreted as a not so acceptable expansion of current theories and standard models.

So she found herself in sort of a dilemma situation: If even computing could do magic, then there was so much potential for improvements on some very important experiments, but surroundings would not stop being so terribly conservative easily. Secretly trying to perform... modifications... however brought with it the risk of discovery or failure for the lack of a whole team as a resource. She tried it anyway, smuggling both equipment out of the facility and her husband in for assistance. Hoping that a few inofficial tours behind the scenes and some hands-on experience (that is... pressing a few buttons on fancy machines believing they'd actually be enabled) would instigate their son's desire to follow the path of his parents, they brought the young boy Artur in, too.

That was until one of the modified experiments, turned on in the middle of the night and with all cameras and logging systems bypassed, experienced a malfunction. The attempt to draw raw power from another realm beyond earth hooked up to a different dimension than the one originally intended, so what came out of the portal was not ready, or willing, to be consumed by the machinery. Feeling that it had been sucked out of its home, the demonic entity instantly turned highly aggressive, broke out, ruined the lab and killed Artur's parents.

Yet in the process it also destroyed the apparatus holding open the portal that was its only way back. The creature realized it had condemned itself to be alone in a foreign space, so it turned to its only hope left for salvaging its own kind in this unknown world: reproduction. No female needed in this case, however. Only... a proper, suitable host that most importantly was still alive. It happened while Artur had been knocked out of consciousness, so he never got to know that this kind of thing actually happened to him at this point.

The next day, it was believed that some kind of terrible incident had occured, but none of the investigators had knowledge of the supernatural and thus failed to figure out what truly happened, also the creature had disappeared. Artur, now an orphan child, was adopted by another couple who lived in the Chicago area. Little did he or his new surroundings know that what 'impregnated' him was only waiting for him to reach adulthood, yet at the same time was not adapted to both ordinary human nature and Artur's magical heritage. No Xenomorph baby or other shit burst out of his chest at his 20th-or-something birthday, but... he started to change.


Powers/Skills:

Artur's never been truly assimilated by his infestation, but has managed to maintain the upper hand in terms of control over himself. In fact this means that he is able to tap into newfound prowess that is the result of his demon merger. However, compared to what the creature it originally came from was able to do, it is limited. You will notice that beneath those gloves and shoes he usually wears are claws that, albeit relatively small, are sharp to the touch. Just like his teeth. Anyone still interested in a mélée might learn that his bones, muscles and skin are quite a tad more dense, powerful and sturdy than they should be, but much to Artur's unfortune this doesn't really help against bullets and has not exactly improved his overall speed. He still needs stuff like his heart or lungs without too many holes in them, you know ?

Having been able to deal with the street thugs of the run-down block of town he lives in with his own methods so far, Artur's never really seen the need to pick up some firearm's training. He'd be a novice shooter to say the least, but to his excuse he keeps claiming that the bang of a bullet would be too much for his 'hypersensitive' ears on the long run, let alone the muzzle fire of something on full auto! There is reason to believe that the demon that approached him came from a plane where things are much more quiet than on earth, otherwise developing auditory and visual senses that improve detection capabilities as much as they are easy to be overloaded and turn even worse than your average eyes or ears for the exact same reason doesn't make much sense.

Oh, and his personality has become a little more... unstable. As easy going and relaxed as he is in most circumstances, he starts to accelerate into some sort of rage and recklessness once being attacked in a manner too nasty or once he's started to draw the blood of his foes.


Things your character wants to happen (probably won't):
Being accepted and valued for what he is in his entirity, and maybe find out more about what he himself really is now.


Things you as a writer want to happen (maybe will):
Monster killing or other forms of action, puzzles, crime solving and interesting interaction with the other characters.


Writing sample:
I participated in the last iteration of this and hope you still remember me :)

The Sunday Group - The Flicker Cases

I will try to scratch my application together this evening or tomorrow.

What's the deadline ? If I should fail to deliver until it then please don't wait for me.

Blades of the Blood Coast

Lorcan

As the minutes passed, Lorcan found it increasingly easy to truly watch what was going on despite the room being so busy. No headache yet, but that could still come despite the fact that his mind had apparently adapted to the plethora of information and successfully started to just skip everything of obvious non-importance. Therefore, pretty much the only thing left on his observation schedule was the table where 'Sabers & Shields' was played. An interesting game, but just like any other game primarily based on chance it was prone to one or more of its players not being able to stand a series of bad luck. The outburst would come, sooner or later, that was what the Skayleigh expected. If not now than later on when the stakes were even higher and, more importantly, more alcohol was in the players' heads, too.

Someone barking something made the half-giant turn his heads away from the game and towards the window, They had knights down here ? At least that was his very first impression of the blonde man. Then the other maybe was his squire or the like ? The two consumed so much of Lorcan's attention that he didn't realize the elven scholar until the latter was almost out of sight around the next corner. Then the sailors passed by and destroyed all his assumptions about the muscled boy being some sort of 'squire'. That was... unless servants not serving a knight but a tavern were called 'squires' down here, too!

Some of the barmaid's words did reach his pointy hears and burned into his head. Trouble ? Why should there be any significant trouble with some food and beverages that would merely last for another week anyway ? Except for the greedy guards Valorne so far had given the impression of a rather civilized place. It probably was nothing, but Lorcan felt some kind of eagerness to take a look behind the scenes.

It would be rather unappropriate to even try that as long as Raddek was gesturing him to come towards the others though. Rooms for them sounded good, but helping the innkeeper out 'with a few things' did not. And then, as the half-elf had come closer and could listen their so-far-leader's other words, things started to merge and fall into place. So that crate had likely contained nothing but... beer ? That felt a little hilarious in the first moment.

"Erm... What exactly is a 'dark auction shipper' ? Sounds like a special term local to this place for me. And do we need to fine one, or do we need to find a specific one ?" he asked, trying to keep his tone low and the need for discretion about this information was pretty obvious.

Blades of the Blood Coast

So in preparation of my post I noticed that a question has popped up:

Does Raddek address Lorcan to move towards the others and lean in as well ? I'm asking because he sits a bit away from Migi and Jaina.