Force and Fury

The Hourglass Order

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L O R E N T I N E Q U E E N

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_♪

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A plan of sorts had worked itself out. Leon and Eun-Ji were already headed for the cargo hold as quickly as they could get there. Manfred had been tasked with talking to the helmsman or captain (whoever was in the wheelhouse) and bringing the ship to a stop. Meanwhile, Zarra, Carmillia, and Dorothea found themselves trying to push the crowd over the top into violent riot... but not too violent.

The first of these three groups wound their way through the dining area at the front, just hurried enough to draw some murmurs and turned heads. "What is it with people tonight!?" exclaimed one patron. "Goddammit, Ethel," grumbled another, "Second group in as many minutes. Young people these..." Then, they were out of earshot and pushing through the saloon-style doors at the rear of the room. A small lounge area, with rattan furniture, end tables, a small library, and an attendant standing beside a mini-bar and humidor full of fine Joruban and Corriban, and Palaparish cigars flashed by in instants. A mustachioed man looked up from an avviso bemusedly and a woman in a fancy but somewhat worn dress jumped back.

There seemed to be something almost... instinctual driving Eun-Ji forward. It was almost as if she'd been in similar situations before. Leon, for his part, struggled to keep up, relying on a certain amount of natural agility, and still managing to placate disturbed patrons along the way with a brief conciliatory word, bow, flourish, or smile. The lounge narrowed into a hallway, wide enough that only about three could walk abreast. There were doors to either side and Leon nearly found himself going through one until he noticed a Kerreman word on it that he recognized as "Do not". Through the door on his side were a pair of mages, busy powering the engines that moved the great riverboat's novel 'paddle-wheels'. On the other side, he caught a glimpse of - nevermind, they were past it.

Eun-Ji slowed for a moment, seeming to look for something but, up ahead, through another set of double doors, loomed the saloon. There was a slight 'click' and she could see and sense the kinetic energy as well as she could hear it. That door had just closed. Her eyes flashed about the patrons beyond the glass-and-wooden doors and spotted a trio, moving as one, purposefully. Subtly, as she'd learned in the Lotus Sentry, she reached out with her manas, hoping for the telltale signs of the latent stored energy that often lingers in slightly larger quantities within magic users. It was hard to pick out in the bustle. Someone had recognized Leon from a show he'd once done and a few others had turned their heads. Nonetheless, the members of that trio were magic users. They were headed for an access hallway. They appeared to be paying little attention to the revelry around them. This was worth investigating.

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Meanwhile, Manfred planted a quick kiss on Dory's lips. He did not want to get involved in politics, but the sad history of House Hohnstein was well enough known that he could not possibly begrudge her wanting to get her own back right now. She headed down with Carmillia and Zarra, the latter a dancing monkey in his bright red uniform.

From his perch on the upper deck, where a few drunken patrons played lazy games of shuffleboard in the distance, Manfred made his way toward the pilothouse, the churning waves lapping far below, great gouts of black smoke billowing above him into the pure night sky.

As Manfred approached, he could see that it was not the captain that awaited him in the pilothouse. He'd have recognized the military cut off such a uniform immediately. Even those aboard merchantmen wore it, for such were the Kerreman people - even Feskans. Instead, there was what looked to be the second mate, a helmsman, and a seaman lounging around at the door.

"Good evening, fellows," he said, walking up. He smiled pleasantly enough, in his Kerreman way.

"Hey, wait a second," the seaman called out. "You can't be here! You been drinking, bub?" Four and a half more feet, Manfred thought to himself. "Aww shucks, seems you've caught me. I've gotten a bit lost," he continued, still approaching, "Thought you might have some directions for me."

The mate opened the door and the helmsman glanced over. "Go ask someone else!" the former spat, with the air of professionally offended lower nobility. "Damidammed drunkard."

"Gentlemen, please, I meant no harm," Manfred apologized, starting to back away and turn. The helmsman took his eyes off of the interloper. Emboldened, the Second Mate stepped forward, leering at a man who he didn't recognize as his social better the way one might look at a turd on the ground. "Nonetheless, you have caused it," he scolded.

"I'm leaving. Don't worry. I'll be on my way," Manfred assured him. With that, he grabbed a hold of the seaman and, using a Kastang technique from his time in the military, flung the sailor over his shoulder and into the door. It flew open and smacked the Second Mate in the face. reeling backward, he caught the helmsman and they crashed into the control console.

Manfred Hohenfelter von Meckelin-Thandau strode forward. He delivered a short, sharp kick to the side of the stunned seaman's head and that was one threat neutralized. The Second Mate opened his mouth to shout. Manfred used a magusjaeger's technique to draw the sound out. He turned it into a telekinetic shove that smashed the man's head into one of the pilothouse's support beams. He, too, went limp. The helmsman was back on his feet. He turned to run but, here, his uniform hindered him. Those coattails, Manfred thought, shaking his head inwardly. Just like capes, they are never a good choice. He grabbed one and ducked a retaliatory right cross. Reaching into his dinner jacket, he drew a wheel-lock pistol and clubbed the man across the side of the face. He stumbled back, woozy, and Manfred put him in a sleeper hold until he went limp. "I am sorry about this," he mumbled as much to himself as his victim. "Truly, I am. You are but an enemy of circumstance."

The Nobleman checked his pistol for bloodstains and, satisfied that there were none, tucked it back into its hidden holster. Stepping over the unconscious figures, he pulled the lever that sent a magnetic pulse down to the engines and their mages. Within moments, her could feel the Lorentine Queen slowing, coasting now only on its built up momentum. It would be best if he weighed anchor, he supposed.

As Manfred stepped out, he committed one final act of sabotage, ripping the wheel from its column with a bit of kinetic assistance. This, he tossed like a clay pigeon into the black waters beyond. Striding to the very front, he peered down at the near-mob. Poor cretins. He couldn't blame them, really. Their lives were drudgery and the Rednitz who exercised such unconstitutional control over Feska noble only in name, and dubiously at that.

The ship continued to slow and, as he watched, aware that he should likely drop the anchor or offer support to Leon and Eun-Ji, he saw Dorothea make a move, coming up to the fore of the group, as if about be next in line to drink of the aberration's unholy sweet might. The woman that he loved, fiery and beautiful, reached into her bodice and... pulled out a pistol. Godsdammit, Dory A gunshot echoed through the damp air and seemed to get people's attention. She began speaking, momentarily supplanting the Traveler's agent, who seemed... skeptical at best. Zarra, the slinky Perrenchman, was nowhere to be seen, and Carm was hanging back. Manfred scowled. Should the trio's scheme fail, they'd likely be put to flight. It was a delicate balance that the two women would need to strike and he did not envy them. Silently, he wished them luck and turned to make haste for the lower decks, where Leon and Eun-Ji would almost certainly have their hands full.

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The Hourglass Order

If the actions of two weeks previous had taught Jomurr anything, it was the value of ruthlessness. His enemies - and he had come to understand that they were legion - would not hold back. Thus, neither should he. The husband and wife - in truth, he assumed that they were wed and that this was not some sort of tryst - scrabbled backwards, preserving their dignity by hitching up their sheets. They had survived the night due mainly to his actions. The others had been mere accessories. He furrowed his brow. Who had been with him, again?

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H U G O H U N G H O R A S Z

Another thread: he felt it snap. The old man sat in his study. Outside, the grassy fields of Tanteubra swayed in an afternoon breeze. After the first couple of instances, he had learned how to walk between timelines and retain his memories. It was both his greatest source of pain and sanity.

He looked at the five young people in front of him. He had memories of all: reviewing their student records, catching glimpses of them on campus or in the streets, welcoming them in. Yet, he also remembered that four had not existed in another timeline. Was it the most recent one? It was becoming hard to keep track of the many lives he had lived. The ones with Enna had been the best, even if they'd been shorter. Even if she'd gone.

With some fuzziness, he recalled his instructions to that group. Saving a life: creating more lives, erasing others. It was a needed change, and one for the better.

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J O C A S T A R E

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Ayla @Ti, Yalen @pantothenic, Ysilla @Pirouette, Zarina @YummyYummy

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Jocasta sat demurely in her rollchair, riding hood pulled back, hands knitted in her lap, blonde pigtails spilling over her shoulders.

Bitch, she thought at one of the girls.
Slut, she thought at another.
Creep, she thought at the third.

All the way through, she continued to smile shyly and confusedly. She bowed her head slightly in greeting and said all of the expected words. Pitiable, she knew, and unremarkable. One would not have been able to sense, even with the Gift, the disdain that she held for these people. It brought Jocasta genuine joy to know them for what they were: awful in their own ways, just like her.

Then, a priest came in, limping heavily. The twenty-year-old smiled most of all at him. Oh my, how the stairs have done a number on you. It would be more difficult to fake concern, she knew, as she reached out and probed his energies with the Gift. Truth be told, she was wary of doing it with Hugo Hunghorasz around: Hugo, whose use of magic far outstripped even her own. She started to school her features into an empathetic mask and then she felt it: the boy's dead and dying nerves. She lost control of her face for a moment. She didn't have to fake empathy.

After a moment, however, she remembered that he was on four still, somehow, while she was on two. He was a priest, worshiping gods that hated him. Bitch, she thought, slut, creep, idiot. The first of the group was going out of her way to antagonize him. Jocasta... wasn't sure how to feel - maybe like she should've been the one to do it, at least. Then, the Virangishwoman offered her coffee. Jocasta blinked. "Oh, I don't partake. I fear my constitution can't handle the excitement, but the kindness of your offer will be remembered." She bowed her head slightly, deferentially, and made her best apologetic face. It was a good one. The idiots were fooled.

A folder landed in front of Jocasta and she blinked. Hugo gave a speech, but a tremor worked its way through her, unbidden. He was saying things that she knew. She looked, instead, at the paper again and then the Bitch made her blood boil. "I-if I may," she squeaked, "I am one of those... 'ailing' to which my friend Zamira refers. I thank her for her concern." She nodded. Let's see if you correct the name, she thought to herself. "Yet, my... my entire life has consisted of others 'solving' problems for me, 'protecting' me, and rarely do they ask for my in-input, much less my consent. I..." She plucked up her courage and straightened in her seat. "I will not be a part of this unless we consult with those people." She balled up a fist. "Th-they deserve to be listened to and we should be there as a resource for them to help fight this battle that has been... thrust upon them."

Her performance finished but never truly finished, Jocasta glanced nervously about the table, once again shrinking into herself. The Paradigm, for his part, was watching her in that same slightly unnerving way that he had earlier. She held back on shooting him a look. "Both of your concerns are well conceived and well-noted," He assured the two young women. "Your priority is in protecting human life. That involves stopping the beasts and discovering the location of any further aberrations. The residents of that refuge are at once your best source of information, those most threatened, and either your greatest allies or threats depending on how you deal with them. The power of a mad magic user far outstrips that of a rampaging animal."

He had little else to say. The portal hummed open wider. Already, the first glow of morning was appearing in the sky of distant Torragon. "I shall trust you," Jocasta said quietly, rolling up to the tear in reality after Yalen. She took a deep breath and pushed through to the land of her birth.

Immediately the air assaulted her: cold, dry, and lifeless. None of these people were threats, but neither did they seem all that useful. Already she could sense things that they could not hope to, save Yalen: hulking Halassa resting in the darkness, their great shells like boulders as they slept, coyotes stalking though the valleys, and Froabases roosting on the crags. Yet, she sensed that many of the animals were restless. She sensed the distant probing magics of other Tethered, still there in the refuge, curious, reaching back, but frightened. Pathetic, she thought, but it wasn't their fault. They'd been raised to be pathetic. They hadn't the willpower or intelligence to peer beyond the veil of years of brainwashing and their own shattered memories. Jocasta removed her hands from her wheels and pushed herself instead with the Gift. It would not do to lift off just yet, not until she knew more. If Father was right, she would have a friend there, among other potential friends. First, however, there were the Halassa. She could sense the agglomerations of chemical and kinetic energy that denoted the beasts. A pack of five was headed the group's way. Jocasta knew well the threat those monsters presented with their foot-thick shells, bodies big as a wagon, and jaws capable of slicing through stone. Clearly something was wrong with the huge snapping tortoises. They never hunted by night. Yet, they were approaching with every bit of that deceptive speed that they had.

Jocasta glanced at Yalen. She could tell that he'd felt their approach as well. The others would momentarily. "We have company," she announced simply. "A pack of five Halassa, maybe more." She raised a hand and pointed. "Down that way. They've got to be aberration-mad and, at this rate, they'll be on us in about a minute." Jocasta could've killed them from far off, but the greater good would be served by seeing how her team members handled them instead... if they could. Halassa were no laughing matter. Their shells were all-but impenetrable.

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Hey, how's it going?

Welcome aboard new person! Detail-orientation is definitely appreciated in some quarters here, so no need to apologize for it!

Canceled

Canceled.

Canceled

Canceled.

Code Vein (Closed)

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_{Location: The Crows' Nest // Date: February 24, 2057 // Time: 18:30 // Interactions: Erik @FunnyGuy, Dallas @pantothenic, Vincent @Daxam}

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What Lysandra did following her adventure in the ruined city brought new meaning to the common term 'falling asleep'. Her back was lost to agony and all that she could feel of her arms and shoulders was a throbbing ache. It was a struggle just to transfer out of her wheelchair and into bed. She roughly half-managed and fell onto her mattress, too sore and exhausted to even shift positions. Only barbarians go to bed with their shoes on. Lys supposed that she was a barbarian, then.

To say that she woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed would be... something of an exaggeration, but she was considerably better. The myriad aches were duller and, if her arms still felt like spaghetti, at least they were a bit al dente this morning. Besides, she was now powered by science. After hiding from the provgov people by taking a well-timed morning bath, she took her time getting dressed in a cute off the shoulder top and some jean shorts. She was accosted by Erik just outside of the garden but, finally, she got to spend her day with the mistle... and the roughly dozen other projects that she had on the go. This was the first time that she'd gotten to work with a live sample, and most of what she did consisted of first trying to save the plant from its excessive recent trauma. Still, she had a few working if wholly-unsubstantiated theories:

• The blood beads were its fruits and means of spreading its seeds, which were somehow mixed in with the pseudo-blood. The mistle was using the revenants, who were particularly wide-ranging and effective organisms, just like most flowering plants with ingestible fruits used animals.
• It logically followed that the liquid contained in the blood beads was actually a species of sap, evolved or engineered to have qualities remarkably similar to human blood to ensure that the fruits were attractive to revenants.
• This led to a troubling working hypothesis: either the revenants and BOR parasites were much older than previously believed and simply poorly-documented or else classified knowledge or, alternatively, the mistle, revenants, and everything else connected to the collapse that seemed to run afoul of the basic laws of biology had been engineered by someone or some process.
• Finally, she had her suspicions that the mistle must be parasitic in nature. Its structural similarities, at least outwardly, to Monotropa Uniflora - the ghost plant - were striking, and its white colour denoted a lack of the chloroplasts necessary for traditional photosynthetic processes to occur. Just what the plant was parasitic towards remained a mystery, and Lysandra cursed her absence during its discovery. While uprooting the mistle had been an absolute necessity for its survival, not being able to study its environment had meant the loss of vital clues as to how it worked.

Thus, the Commune's lone scientist contented herself with stabilizing it as best she knew: deep, loamy soil poached from Poppy's garden, limited direct sunlight, and some water. That would have to do for now. She spent the rest of the day intermittently picking dirt out from beneath her nails and removing as much of the corrosion from the new radio's wires as she could, replacing them as necessary. She commandeered Dallas to help move things, but he seemed oddly...dumb today, possibly distracted, and she was too busy to be his emotional support animal.

It was five in the afternoon when she rolled out of her little workshop in the storage room, determined to reclaim for her equipment the room that had temporarily been Ionna's. Instead, she found Vincent and strong-armed him into helping her set up the projector screen in the Great Room for movies and karaoke. She trailed him around like an absolute nag as he pushed the speakers into place, making conversation and offering somewhat ineffectual help when needed. She ferried bottles of vodka, whisky, and wine on her lap, shifted chairs around, flopped on the couch for a few minutes, and then plugged ALL THE THINGS in.

At some point, however, she felt the need to eat but no compunction to cook. How bothersome. Poppy had been in the kitchen area earlier, but Lysandra was loath to put herself through another ordeal almost as bad as the Tsar Bomba had been. With a sort of anticipatory schadenfreude, she stole glances at Erik as he walked up and contemplated taking a bite. Do it, she thought evilly. You know you have to now that people are watching. She couldn't suppress her grin. Do it!

The cake was - apparently - good, and Lys was not entirely sure if that was true or if Erik had noticed her shit-eating grin and decided to play an uno reverse card on her. With some degree of trepidation, once he'd gone off to plug in some cables that were out of her reach, she quickly made her way to the cake and cut a slice. No witnesses, she told herself, after looking quickly about the room. With a cup of strong wine ready to wash away the anticipated taste, she took a bite, every muscle in her body tensing up.

Lysandra blinked and... savoured the flavour. She glanced around guiltily. When even Poppy's cooking was good, it could only be an sign that this was going to be a night to remember.

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'Allo

Is it Triune Goddess’s symbolism on your avatar? I like more moody and grounded fantasy for sure, but humor and wonder and ability to reshuffle lots of things in the deck, so to speak, keep fantasy genre my favorite, too. Hello and welcome

@VerminS

This, TBH. I try to make those bedrock components of anything that I write. They're baked into the current RPG that I'm running. A sense of wonder is... pretty much the point of fantasy, IMO. Anyways, good to meet you both. Hope to catch you around the forum!

The Hourglass Order

Awesome character, @pantothenic, and I'm seriously digging the religious angle, which hasn't really been focused on as much as I'd have hoped so far, and his use of the Tethering. He'd have unusually fine control and very long drawing and casting range. His progression of the disease is also considerably on the low end of where most people would be by sixteen, as he's still ambulant, so perhaps some sort of remark about how some people maybe even believe that his fervent faith is pushing back against the disease, delaying it?

I also imagine, given his personality, that he might want to explore binding at some point, genuinely for the sake of healing as opposed to most others' ulterior motives. In any case, he's great and I look forward to having him in the RPG. Pending whatever little tweaks you see fit to make based on this advice, feel free to pop him into the characters tab and do an introductory post. We can discuss a way to slip him into the current arc if you like, either with the groups or staying back with Hugo, Jocasta, and a few others.

'Allo

Welcome aboard! Nothing quite like fantasy. Also, you underestimate just how old-as-dirt many of us are on here. :P

The Hourglass Order

@VolcanicLaval Hey, happy to hear about your interest. We've just kicked off a three or so posting cycle mini-arc. If you can jump in quickly, you can still get in for the first cycle. Otherwise, you can take your time and join once the mini-arc is over. Regardless, unless we're at 12 people (currently at 10), the RP is always accepting! I'd recommend joining our discord to keep up to date and get help from the community in making a character. We're especially looking for anyone to play a Hexaic character, Torragonese, Belzaggic, or yasoi right now. Regardless, feel free to hop into the chat!