Fetzen

Kings and Killers: A Classical Fantasy Adventure (Chapter 1)

"In our primes ?" Fyr snapped back at Dalious without even any intentional desire to do so. "If that is my prime, then I hope I grow old very quickly!" Old and with gray hair, or without any hair at all. Oh, he didn't even have these on his head anyway! And now he had neither his trusty axe and something to place his butt on either!

"And it wasn't even really my axe!" he released the quintessence of his thoughts loudly for he needed just something to vent the pressure inside him with. This had been his journey to get to know the world and to proove that he could really achieve something, and now it had likely found its end or had it ? Those back at home would cut his head off once they figured out...

"Ask that book where this bandit is going. I want to rip him apart!" Having said this, Fyr smashed another table at the wall. The furniture had already taken some damage in the previous fight and now it shattered into pieces and splinters.

"We can't even pull the wagon without a camel now!" They would need something else... and hopefully none of the others would have the idea of him pulling the damn thing because he was so big. Which he wasn't, at least not in Fyr's own opinion as he still could feel the lack of proper food from back in the mushroom caves.

From the Egg - A Dragon Training Rp

Rothros couldn't help but feel a surge of disgust rise from somewhere beneath the lower end of his fin. Not just the smell, but also the taste of blood touched his senses even though it was merely a psychosomatic reaction, but to the memory of very real events. Having been a soldier, he had had to bathe in other people's blood quite literally. Undine, humans, elves, ... even his own at times. The ocean watered down everything for everybody, but also exposed everybody to everything. The liquid of life had many nuances to its taste not only among different species, but also among different individuals. There were those in the Undine navy who claimed that they could even taste whether somebody had already been sick before his or her violent death, but Rothros had never believed those stories.

There was no need to speculate about either of the two combatants' physical condition though either. Both of them appeared to be formidable fighters, but Rothros silently cast severe shadows onto what of Trevor's attitude had become visible as the man stepped forward. He did not agree with it, but honestly he did not agree with the monk's decision making either. Weren't the dragons supposed to make a choice ? So Dula either had some sort of otherworldly connection to the dragons in spite of them not even having hatched yet, or she had taken things very much into her own hand. The imaginative thought of the dragons, once grown up, lambasting her for eliminating contestants even before any of them had had any chance to make a judgement almost caused Rothros to smirk.

The only good thing about this fight was that the prospect of two individuals constantly bickering at each other while trying to overcome decades of hostility was effectively ruled out. The Undine soldier watched with a scowl and with his arms crossed in front of his breast. Somewhat inadvertently, the gesture also helped to make his giant muscles even more blatantly visible.

Now do me a favor and call in someone to clean this up with dignity!

Rothros had seen too much action to feel much pity for the elf, but the question whether Cova would have started this fight on her own had Dula not called her in still lingered in his mind. Hopefully they would take proper care of her body. What kind of omen would it be if the one adventure to save the world from this war would start with one of its worst traditions, leaving the dead to the crows ?

From the Egg - A Dragon Training Rp

Boats... When had been the last time Rothros had been on board of one of them ? He honestly could not remember. When he had seen a ship or other naval vessel in his past, it had most often been from a perspective no other seaman of the land would have liked to ever witness: keel first. And more often than not this had happened with the firm intention of letting the decks on top of that keel plunge into the sea below indeed. Of all the persons on board, he and another Undine he had spotted previously had all reason to have the least fear of things sinking, but one could never know...

He didn't even know what all of this was for yet. He personally had not even heard of this island before -- which in itself was a bit of a remarkable oddity already. His kind preferred building cities in coral reefs and not just on the bare sea floor for various reasons, the most important ones being ease of construction and finding more food. In times of growing population, scouts were usually sent out to find new reefs or other places of interest and this had happened in the past often enough so they would have stumbled upon any island long ago already, wouldn't they ?

It almost felt a bit like a conspiracy...

----

At least it was no Phospholite conspiracy it seemed, so much Rothros could tell rather quickly after their arrival on shore. The thought of jumping back into the ocean and making a run for it should things turn out of for the worse had crossed his mind, too. It could only be pulled off reasonably well while not having ventured further inland however, so the Undine male remained extra cautious for the time being. At which point his mind actually transitioned from distrust and caution to believing the words of those welcoming them -- he couldn't tell himself after the fact anymore. Maybe the revelation of humans having royally screwed up and quite literally so had shaken his thoughts to their foundations enough for them to just topple over onto the other side ?

And somewhere deep inside, Rothros felt angry. So there had been dragon eggs around all the time. A power that could have been used for all kinds of things like, for example, eliminating those in the ruling class that wanted this pointless war to drag on and on. Or just to give everyone back that tiny bit of humbleness that they might not actually be the pinnacle of beings on this world ? Oh what a foolish set of thoughts that was! By now the trenches between the various factions were far too deep and it would need many more bodies to fill them. It wouldn't work that easy way he imagined and, last but not least, it was the dragons chosing them and not the other way round...

But just what had King Rosmund done exactly ? Rothros would have really liked to hammer just about everyone that hadn't been on board the ship about this, but at the same time he felt like already not liking any of the potential answers. It had to be something powerful, something rather unknown or others before him would have done it already ? Or something that had become possible just recently ? Like dragons suddenly willing to bond with more mortal beings, for example -- an eerie similarity between their situation and that of the king, wasn't it ?

Did at least somebody here have any real idea about what they were fiddling with ? Or did everybody just want to keep going, but not being the one accidentally pulling the plug ? *

*Pulling the plug

Aside from the rather obvious issues with metallurgy, there have been some other reservations in the far past about submarine mining operations as well. While it is commonly regarded as nothing more as a superstition to scare children with by now, back in the day many Undine believed in the possibility that there could be something very different beneath the ocean floor that just more solid earth. Digging large holes into it could crack this something open and, if it would turn out to be a vast void or just thin air again, potentially drain all the water away. Contacts with dwarves who could have laughed at them and told a very different story were seldom enough for this line of thought to survive the passage of time for a surprisingly long span.

'Not wanting to be the one pulling the plug' is a common, somewhat humorous metaphor born out of this supersitition. It refers to an experimenter who is not ready, or not willing, to face the potential consequences of his experiments.

From the Egg - A Dragon Training Rp

A little busy the next two days. I will have my fist post up on Saturday.

I heard there's a Discord ? :)

From the Egg - A Dragon Training Rp

Rothros

Name: Rothros

Race: Undine

Age: 49

Text color: Yellow

Special skill:
Toughness. Rothros is a hardened farmer, miner and soldier who has seen both the bitter cold of water and the fiery heat of the earth, the world below the water's surface and also a bit above. He can absorb unusual punishment and a dragon bonded to him would probably exhibit the same ability. A 'go anywhere' creature that has not much trouble transitioning in and out of the water. Also, if one combines water and fire, the result could be a breath of steam that can be just as damaging.

Ambition/dream:
There is nothing specific Rothros craves for not yet knowing about an invention prior to inventing it lies in the very nature of the thing. Imaginations there are many: An armor more robust than simple seashells, yet light enough to carry while swimming. A projectile than can be launched from below the surface just like an archer does with his arrow on the battlefield, yet is strong enough to cripple a ship that would otherwise need to be intercepted by Undine warriors at the risk of their lives... But how to propel it ? How to aim it and how to give it enough oomph upon impact ?

Childhood:
Rothros stems from a place that is commonly referred to as Hetrop, although not many people outside of Undine society know it actually exists. That cannot come as much of a surprise though as a certain level of daringness can be considered a prerequisite for any desire to live there. It is a place where the hot innards of the world boil close underneath the surface, yet above that surface is an immense layer of water that allows one to stay cool.

The white and black smokers caused by ocean water seeping through cracks and touching molten stone spew out a constant stream of sulphur and other minerals considered valuable. Mining those is hard and also dangerous work, but still the Undine seek out the opportunity for there is another thing to be found there: food. There is a competition for fish and other sea fauna from humans and elves, but nobody cares about seaworms that thrive in this kind of environment at the ocean floor.

Rothros' parents are farmers who maintain, harvest and post-process the worm colonies and mineral deposits so it was only natural for their son to follow their footsteps as soon as he could. Workers in this area are usually free to take comparably long leaves in one of the coral reef settlements where living conditions are a lot more hospitable though.

Adolencence/training:
Joining the military was pretty much set in stone for Rothros, just like many others of his kind do. The Undine marine forces are faced with a few challenges that could be considered rather unusual and which always require people to act and risk their lives in order to safeguard them, their families and all the others. The war is fought on the sea as fiercely as it is on land and the remains of this pointless carnage tend not to stay on the wind-whipped surface for very long. Instead, they sometimes literally fall onto Undine people's heads or at least their cities.

The military has sort of a special branch that is occupied with cleaning up wreckages and, more importantly, disposing of any dangerous cargo that might damage the coral reefs. Salvaging precious goods or returning the bodies of deceased seamen to their human families also poses a significant source of foreign currency and bolsters relationships with the coastal settlements. On top of that, there have been several attempts of Phospholite vessels to cause deliberate damage to Undine settlements by polluting the shallow waters with oil or dragging anchor-like structures and nets over the ocean floor.

Rothros spent his base training with such tasks before becoming involved in sneak attacks upon hostile vessels. Coming from below and damaging a ship's hull from outside sounds like a rather safe thing compared to surface-based approaches, but the Phospholites keep learning in terms of how to dodge or escape such things. A thin layer of copper or bronze on top of a wooden structure can pose quite the barrier to overcome already.

Adulthood/After Completing Training:
Rothros has seen how dangerous the 'job' can be. It served as motivation to try something different, to become an apprentice in one of the several workgroups who try to develop new techniques of defending Undine territory. Many of these involve digging deeper into a discipline that so far, for the rather obvious reason of being underwater, has not exactly been any Undine's forte: blacksmithing.

The challenges are unique for it doesn't suffice to just find a facility on land, but one also can't count on the experience of human masters alone. They work with steel and steel is both too heavy and too prone to corrosion in salt water. Bronze doesn't rust, but is even heavier. Undine have started to mess around with other metals, but there is a lot of new knowledge to build up from scratch when it comes to combining and processing them. Rothros' new job involved a lot of learning, experimenting and trial and error, but also getting to know humans much more closely for everything happened on land.

The information provided to him about this 'expedition' to the remote island has not been very specific, mostly that his employers would keep the spot open for him even if it would take very long for him to return...

Notable family:
His parents are still alive, but they still work in the Hetrop mining and farming colony. It is therefore not very likely to encounter them unless perhaps they are forced to leave the ocean. Rothros has no siblings yet.

Notable figures:
William is the master human blacksmith he worked for in a rather small human town at the coastline. There are also several other apprentices Rothros has worked with prior to his sudden, new assignment.

Character Themes:
Experimenting, discovery, fighting, brutal raw strength.

Character Tragedy:
Rothros has once misjudged the jets of hot water in Hetrop, causing significant damage to the left side of his body. More importantly however he was the foreman of an entire party of seaworm gatherers and still feels somewhat responsible for two of his followers also having been injured very severelyin this incident. This is in spite of the fact that common consensus is that nobody could have foreseen this sudden outburst.

Character flaws:
The accident in Hetrop has left him with a slight limp and impaired vision on his left eye. Rothros is not exactly stubborn, but at times a bit imprudent and prone to jump into action before thinking all too extensively. Also, while his body is perfectly adapted to swimming, at land he's rather sluggish. That certainly isn't helped by the fact that he's just a damn heavyweight individual.

Hobbies:
Deep-diving (sort of a competitive sport that involves testing each other's limits while roping down the continental shelf into the deep sea), archery, wrestling (both in and out of the water).

Appearance:
Rothros exhibits a skin typical to his kind. Adapted to efficient movement underwater, it is very smooth and tight to minimise resistance. Its color is mostly blue-ish, but with hues of silvery gray mixed in almost like a shark. There is some significant scarring running along his left thigh and also a bit on his head, but at least on land most of that is rendered invisible by clothing. As one could expect he has neither hair nor beard, but can definitely brag with a large fin running down from the back of his head almost to the level of his hips. He also has smaller fins running along his elbows and legs and some webbing between his toes and fingers.

At 5'6 he's average for his people, but more on the short side from many others' point of view. A combination of great natural disposition, his time in the military and hard work helping in the forges have caused him to bulk up immensely however. He's well fed and bristling with muscle from top to bottom.

From the Egg - A Dragon Training Rp

Oops, I'm sorry to have forgotten that! I edited the Special skill and hope it is ok now :)

From the Egg - A Dragon Training Rp

Rothros

Name: Rothros

Race: Undine

Age: 49

Text color: Yellow

Special skill:
Toughness. Rothros is a hardened farmer, miner and soldier who has seen both the bitter cold of water and the fiery heat of the earth, the world below the water's surface and also a bit above. He can absorb unusual punishment and a dragon bonded to him would probably exhibit the same ability. A 'go anywhere' creature that has not much trouble transitioning in and out of the water. Also, if one combines water and fire, the result could be a breath of steam that can be just as damaging.

Ambition/dream:
There is nothing specific Rothros craves for not yet knowing about an invention prior to inventing it lies in the very nature of the thing. Imaginations there are many: An armor more robust than simple seashells, yet light enough to carry while swimming. A projectile than can be launched from below the surface just like an archer does with his arrow on the battlefield, yet is strong enough to cripple a ship that would otherwise need to be intercepted by Undine warriors at the risk of their lives... But how to propel it ? How to aim it and how to give it enough oomph upon impact ?

Childhood:
Rothros stems from a place that is commonly referred to as Hetrop, although not many people outside of Undine society know it actually exists. That cannot come as much of a surprise though as a certain level of daringness can be considered a prerequisite for any desire to live there. It is a place where the hot innards of the world boil close underneath the surface, yet above that surface is an immense layer of water that allows one to stay cool.

The white and black smokers caused by ocean water seeping through cracks and touching molten stone spew out a constant stream of sulphur and other minerals considered valuable. Mining those is hard and also dangerous work, but still the Undine seek out the opportunity for there is another thing to be found there: food. There is a competition for fish and other sea fauna from humans and elves, but nobody cares about seaworms that thrive in this kind of environment at the ocean floor.

Rothros' parents are farmers who maintain, harvest and post-process the worm colonies and mineral deposits so it was only natural for their son to follow their footsteps as soon as he could. Workers in this area are usually free to take comparably long leaves in one of the coral reef settlements where living conditions are a lot more hospitable though.

Adolencence/training:
Joining the military was pretty much set in stone for Rothros, just like many others of his kind do. The Undine marine forces are faced with a few challenges that could be considered rather unusual and which always require people to act and risk their lives in order to safeguard them, their families and all the others. The war is fought on the sea as fiercely as it is on land and the remains of this pointless carnage tend not to stay on the wind-whipped surface for very long. Instead, they sometimes literally fall onto Undine people's heads or at least their cities.

The military has sort of a special branch that is occupied with cleaning up wreckages and, more importantly, disposing of any dangerous cargo that might damage the coral reefs. Salvaging precious goods or returning the bodies of deceased seamen to their human families also poses a significant source of foreign currency and bolsters relationships with the coastal settlements. On top of that, there have been several attempts of Phospholite vessels to cause deliberate damage to Undine settlements by polluting the shallow waters with oil or dragging anchor-like structures and nets over the ocean floor.

Rothros spent his base training with such tasks before becoming involved in sneak attacks upon hostile vessels. Coming from below and damaging a ship's hull from outside sounds like a rather safe thing compared to surface-based approaches, but the Phospholites keep learning in terms of how to dodge or escape such things. A thin layer of copper or bronze on top of a wooden structure can pose quite the barrier to overcome already.

Adulthood/After Completing Training:
Rothros has seen how dangerous the 'job' can be. It served as motivation to try something different, to become an apprentice in one of the several workgroups who try to develop new techniques of defending Undine territory. Many of these involve digging deeper into a discipline that so far, for the rather obvious reason of being underwater, has not exactly been any Undine's forte: blacksmithing.

The challenges are unique for it doesn't suffice to just find a facility on land, but one also can't count on the experience of human masters alone. They work with steel and steel is both too heavy and too prone to corrosion in salt water. Bronze doesn't rust, but is even heavier. Undine have started to mess around with other metals, but there is a lot of new knowledge to build up from scratch when it comes to combining and processing them. Rothros' new job involved a lot of learning, experimenting and trial and error, but also getting to know humans much more closely for everything happened on land.

The information provided to him about this 'expedition' to the remote island has not been very specific, mostly that his employers would keep the spot open for him even if it would take very long for him to return...

Notable family:
His parents are still alive, but they still work in the Hetrop mining and farming colony. It is therefore not very likely to encounter them unless perhaps they are forced to leave the ocean. Rothros has no siblings yet.

Notable figures:
William is the master human blacksmith he worked for in a rather small human town at the coastline. There are also several other apprentices Rothros has worked with prior to his sudden, new assignment.

Character Themes:
Experimenting, discovery, fighting, brutal raw strength.

Character Tragedy:
Rothros has once misjudged the jets of hot water in Hetrop, causing significant damage to the left side of his body. More importantly however he was the foreman of an entire party of seaworm gatherers and still feels somewhat responsible for two of his followers also having been injured very severelyin this incident. This is in spite of the fact that common consensus is that nobody could have foreseen this sudden outburst.

Character flaws:
The accident in Hetrop has left him with a slight limp and impaired vision on his left eye. Rothros is not exactly stubborn, but at times a bit imprudent and prone to jump into action before thinking all too extensively. Also, while his body is perfectly adapted to swimming, at land he's rather sluggish. That certainly isn't helped by the fact that he's just a damn heavyweight individual.

Hobbies:
Deep-diving (sort of a competitive sport that involves testing each other's limits while roping down the continental shelf into the deep sea), archery, wrestling (both in and out of the water).

Appearance:
Rothros exhibits a skin typical to his kind. Adapted to efficient movement underwater, it is very smooth and tight to minimise resistance. Its color is mostly blue-ish, but with hues of silvery gray mixed in almost like a shark. There is some significant scarring running along his left thigh and also a bit on his head, but at least on land most of that is rendered invisible by clothing. As one could expect he has neither hair nor beard, but can definitely brag with a large fin running down from the back of his head almost to the level of his hips. He also has smaller fins running along his elbows and legs and some webbing between his toes and fingers.

At 5'6 he's average for his people, but more on the short side from many others' point of view. A combination of great natural disposition, his time in the military and hard work helping in the forges have caused him to bulk up immensely however. He's well fed and bristling with muscle from top to bottom.

From the Egg - A Dragon Training Rp

Hello!

I'd like to ask whether this roleplay is still open for an application ?

Kings and Killers: A Classical Fantasy Adventure (Chapter 1)

Axe ? Gone!
Spear ? Gone!
Fists ? Out of range!

Yet there was something both still available and in range: debris!

As the bandit leader sought his way out of the now quite demolished main hall, Fyr's family heirloom firmly in the bastard's hands, he probably hardly witnessed how Fyr pressed one of the larger parts of a splintered table into service as a makeshift projectile.

Attack roll (fail)

Fetzen Request: [1d20-2] Roll: [12] Result: 10

Only when the wooden object was stopped dead in its trajectory by the doorframe it firmly got wedged into, the man hastily took a look over his shoulder and then hurried onwards. Fyr rushed after him quickly, but had to dislodge the part in question again first in order to make room for his overly large (though still malnourished!) body. It consumed enough of a timespan so when Fyr was finally done and able to take a look outside, the hostile was gone.

In his mind, Fyr could not even start to describe the magnitude of this failure. What would his family say once he was back home ? All he had left now was his shield! He needed something new, but how to pay for it ? He still owned some coin to Lapis in the first place...

Kings and Killers: A Classical Fantasy Adventure (Chapter 1)

Fyr

There were a few too many things going on simultaneously for Fyr to keep track off, but the one thing he was pretty aware of was that one hostile individual, probably the leader of this whole attack, was still standing. Having decided not to throw the spear but to stab the other person with it in his last attack, Fyr still had it available for launch now.

Attack roll

Fetzen Request: [1d20] Roll: [7] Result: 7

His estimate got the unknown weapon's properties completely wrong through. Without having trained with this particular weapon yet, Fyr only managed a trajectory quite different from the one he had actually intended. The spear flew right past the enemy's body and buried itself firmly in the wall behind him.

Great! Could anything else go wrong right now that both his axe and the spear were located somewhere there ?