glibglobb

Blight [OOC]

There we go, a little taste of what's going on in the city proper so that we don't forget there's a whole world outside the Blight and pressing in against it.

Blight [OOC]

Drezlen: Upslope

North of the festering sink hole of the Blight, the dark enchanted alleys gave way to the crowded tenements of human laborers and artisans, further upslope the tightly packed buildings parted for wide open markets dotted with stalls and ringed by storefronts. When finally, the elevation breached the smog and falcons chased pigeons through the clear sky, the nobles erected their vast estates. Called the Bluemarble District for the turquoise stone favored in its construction, the villas huddled up close against the base of the old dwarven castle like obsequious courtiers jostling for a place closest to their sovereign. Between all this luxury and the soot, smog, and magic of lowtown stood a wall, along it guards in polished armor and decorative helms. During daytime it's portculises stood open, though, all traffic passed under the wary eyes of men whose lives depended upon not letting riff raff past. While the sun shined, commoners could visit the district and even attend the forum, a huge marble depression shaded by monumental archways. The heart of Drezlen's limited democracy, the forum allowed any voting citizen (those possessing both land and testicles) to stand and voice their opinions, often loudly and with generous helpings of profanity, conspiracy, paranoia and accusation.

Today the forum, structured in ascending stone rings around a central podium, practically overflowed with the boisterous displays of pompous men and their inflated egos. Though only one could occupy the center at a time, no less than ten were trying to jab in a word edgewise at any given time. Only the elite of the city's guard, the Grey Elves, kept the entire place from erupting into a melee. The reason for today's conflict came down to a single topic: proposition nine. The current occupant of the stage, the eldest son of a respected councilman, even now argued vehemently against the referendum. "Don't forget," he reminded all present in ominous tones, "they enslaved man once, do you want it to happen again? Do you want your son working for a dwarven foreman or your daughter married off to an elven gigolo?" And so it went, a nearly undiluted flow of racism which met with varying reception from the men in attendance, those voting tomorrow and those merely curious. Divided nearly down the middle, the men from old wealth resisted the proposition, while the more progressive new money, entrepreneurs who'd worked their way up from low town and sweated beside dwarves and gnomes in the factories, supported it.

Saan for his part couldn't understand any of the excitement, but he was a Gray Elf so he didn't understand much of what impassioned humans, love least of all but politics second after that. The whole practice was founded on a jacta, dryn iyn'callada, argument by majority. Why not simply recognize the reality of power, determine who wielded the most, and proceed logically from there?... Stationed at the back entrance of the forum, he devoted only around one percent of his total computational ability to the speech resonating through the forum. The rest of his significant brain power remained bent on possible threats. Every passerby, from nobles in their brass buttons to traders in overalls, received a scan. A flick of Saan's pale blue eyes squeezed gigabytes of information out of each of them. After a look at fully clothed person, he knew the shape of their nipples and whether one of their balls hung lower than the other, but what he was looking for specifically was weapons. Weapons were prohibited in the Bluemarble District, of course, but that didn't mean people didn't try to smuggle them in. With the vote looming, many looked to make a statement and sometimes those written in blood spoke loudest. The Faery Liberation Front had been particularly acerbic in their rhetoric as of late and some opponents of the referendum had received death threats.

Danger that day did not come from a person, though, it came from the shadows. To a Grey Elf magic was like a shadow. It was illogical and for a Grey Elf the illogical did not exist. It was a blackhole, lightless and unknowable, a tear in the fabric of the mathematical grid which should, by all rights, encompass everything. Saan noticed just such a tear opening in the shadows cast by the forum's tall stone pillars. It ripped along the dark snapping the grid lines like a shark swimming through a fish net. The Gray Elf's hand was already on his revolver when it broke out of the shadows and reality reasserted itself with an almost audible snap. Time stretched like elastic, pulled wide by the nuclear focus of the Jarnalfar's attention. The goblin, dagger in hand, was 3.8964712087 seconds from the speaker at his current velocity and trajectory. Saan drew his revolver with such a speed that the front sight scorched the leather on the inside of the holster. He aimed down the barrel and the barrel aimed down the Grid, a single line of the vast three dimensional coordinate system that each Jarnalfar projected through his or her mind's eye. With the Grid, all Saan had to do was compute the right equations. There was no aiming, there was no uncertainty, there was just math.

The bullets which slammed into the assassin were not shots, they were the strokes of a surgeon's scalpel. The first blew out the creature's knee, cartilage, bone, and all; the second pierced the heart's right ventricle (.28345 inches higher in goblin anatomy than in a human of the same body scale but Saan compensated), and the third severed the brainstem to assure adrenaline could not carry the dying creature to its target. With three rounds still chambered, the Grey Elf scanned the remaining shadows. By the time, the goblin's body had stopped quivering, its twisted lips issuing their last word, "freedom," Saan had reloaded his gun, holstered it and returned to standard sentry protocol, calm and composed as if not a thing had happened.

Blight [OOC]

Looks good everyone. This is the stage where things usually slow, let's just keep up the 1 or 2 a week rate so it doesn't stall.

I'm still waiting on the brothel players. There are a pair of Iron Police knocking at the door, girls...

I will be letting the Boggart's Hole coast along on its own intertia for a bit as the players are starting to interact. My next post really needs to get outside the Blight because I want people to remember that it is an enclave and around it is still this huge human city with its own politics.

Blight [OOC]

Really good posts everyone. Weaving the various characters together is the hardest part of any RP so to make it easier remember to be flexible and spontaneous. I will not jump down your throat because you took creative license or god moded a nonvital NPC. The elements in the story are there to be toyed with and minor NPCs (anyone who's not a pivotal villain or hero) are at your disposal. Even combat and other contests should be godmoded if the NPC is outmatched by the player character.

Blight [OOC]

@All Pay particular attention to the post titled, the Junkyard. Lot's of vital information for multiple characters in that post, particularly Claire.

Blight [OOC]

The Junkyard

The junkyard had known magic, that much was obvious to any untrained eye, and not the kind of story book magic which pulled rabbits from hats and produced fireworks for starry eyed children. No, this was wyld magic and it's taint was visible from the rainbow puddles coloring the littered ground to the animated teddy bears scurrying through the shadows and the bickering rats who debated each other in scholarly tones over a chunk of cheese. The Junkyard, a word of dread on the lips of Blight Fae. A place of deranged magic and the humans who exuded it from their pores, the wyldings. A graveyard for every wreck and scrap of iron from the Blight and beyond. Rusting piles of the hated metal ringed the junkyard, an impassable barrier warding the sanctum from all faeries. Inside, the scrapheaps twisted and tangled into a vast maze so confusing that any fae who dared the iron sickness to enter would soon find himself hopelessly lost. At the center of this gauntlet sat Adin, fingers drumming impatiently on a throne welded of the same scrap that formed his kingdom. As he lounged, he watched a crow who also watched him with a singly bloodshot eye bulging above it's beak. For the life of him, he couldn't remember who'd ensorcelled it. Maybe he made it last night when he was drunk. Perhaps due to boredom, perhaps on artistic whim, he decided it needed work and waved a hand. Wild magic crackled through the air in crazed bolts of violet energy. The other people gathered, even those completely drunk on magic, ducked or fell flat to the ground as if someone had tossed a grenade. One bolt laced up the side of a discarded mechastrider sprouting a line of pretty daisies from its rusted hull. Another flew wide exploding in a greasy puddle which erupted in a effusion of hopping, croaking frogs. The third did strike the crow, but it was a glancing blow, replacing its left wing with a frying pan. Weighed over by the heavy cookware the bird tilted on its perch and fell out of sight.

"That's better," Adin opined, cracking his knuckles, the seven that were left anyway (wild magic had its cost). He turned his eyes, each a dazzling mixture of blue and pink, on his right hand, a bald fellow with thick spectacles. Nedd looked too straight laced to be an insane aether addict, but that's why Adin liked him. Nedd handled the contacts upslope where magic stuck out like a troll in a dwarven ale house. "She should be there by now, don't you think?"

"I imagine," replied Nedd dryly. He didn't show much emotion but then again he never did and he'd never liked Claire anyway.

Adin turned to the lean figure shivering to his right. "You hear that, Cabriel, she's all yours."

The high elf wiped the sweat from his brow and staggered forward, trying desperately to retain his noble bearing. "You've... made a wise.... decision," he managed. "United, the Seelie Court and Wyldings... can crush... any competition. We'll have the glam trade to ourselves."

"And our replacement alchemist?"

"My liege, Queen Juliana, has someone selected, a talented gnome.... I'm sure you'll find his work... far surpasses this changeling of yours..." he took a deep, painful breath, "so long as you can provide him a lab away from all this iron."

"I'm sure we can work something out, though commuting to work might not be an option," Adin laughed. "About the changeling.... do you intend to?"

"I believe... the terms of our deal required.... you ask no questions regarding her... fate."

Adin grinned as he turned to his number two, "he keeps his wits even when knee-deep in iron, I believe I like this elf." Cabriel somehow managed a diplomatic smile. "Well a deal is a deal, you'll find her in a room at the Boggart's Hole. She'll be carrying a shipment of glam. Keep it, a show of good faith to seal the deal with our Majesty the Queen."

"Very well. We'll send a couple knights to... escort her." the high elf started off at a calm but quick pace, obviously eager to escape this metallic hell.

"Oh and Cabriel..."

"Yes?"

"Don't underestimate her, I Do Not want an angry changeling with a weeks supply of mana out for my blood."

Blight [OOC]

So the shit is about to hit the fan at the brothel and when shit hits the fan, time contracts in the region where shit fan hitting is taking place because lots of things are happening very quickly. So, people with these huge posts where are they are travelling through the Blight need to be careful not to time-leap ahead. Hopefully shit will hit the fan at the Boggarts Hole too and the two shit fan hittings will balance each other out.

Blight [OOC]

The Blight: Greenlight District

Normally the sight of two iron police striding in full armor down the street would be a cause for alarm, but most of the vagrants in the the Greenlight were too drunk, too high or too enchanted to notice. Only a satyr musician practicing his show tunes for the benefit of the layabouts had the presence of mind to pack up his fiddle and gallop for the shadows. "Are you sure there's no other way, sir?" Jaden asked once more, his palms sweating at the thought of what must be done.

Klayde ran his one good eye along the gaudy line of brothels, bars and glam houses, each marked by the standard green lantern or, in some cases, a phosphorescent scrawl of a pixie, wings unfurled, the greenfairy, patron God of hopeless magic addicts from Drezlen to Nyssa on the coast to the Western frontier and beyond. "No," Klayde returned, still as inflexible as his iron breastplate, "we kill this one whore, we save the lives of countless cadets and citizens." He reached the door and pulled down his visor with a heavy clank; Jaden mimicked him. "Don't underestimate them, these elf witches carry daggers that can fit through the joints of your armor." Klayde checked his grizzly studded cudgel, finding it loose in it's sheathe. Jaden, realizing his claymore would only hobble him in such close confines, pulled a serrated short blade from his waist. He gripped it tight, still fighting his conscience as he watched his partner's gauntlet rise and pound heavily at the door. The spiked knuckles tore gouges in the soft wood and the hollow boom resounded through the late morning haze of the Greenlight. Then they waited.

Blight [OOC]

Sounds good everyone, but remember there are more factions than Donovon's Unseelie Court gang in the Blight. There are the wyldlings who we've only barely touched on and the Seelie who've not been mentioned. I was thinking about doing the Seelie Court as less of a gang and more of a mafioso organization with strict hierarchies, traditions and laws.

Blight [OOC]

@februari If that's a sick post, I can't wait to read your healthy ones. A perfect introduction for both your character and the Prince. Get better soon.