HokumPocus

Blue Fog - A Survival and Society Building Game

In the middle of his bony breakdown Sieve received advice from the poorly dressed mercury automaton. It made sense to calm down before saying anything potentially crude.

This "future" seemed more like a new world. Everything from the species discrimination to the hyper-conservative atmosphere of his old steam-and-cogs world was smelted into a new unwieldy metal. He would have to adapt and live on, even if that meant having conversations with naked people. The plague doctor would have to set a new course of thinking, no matter how much his brain yearned to put black tarp over everyone except the thick-robed magician woman.

It was then that the spider woman revealed her name and abilities. Evfimiia Serdiatnitskiia, a name that sounded large to the others, but was closer to the fantasy equivalent of "Bob" when placed next to the sadomasochistic naming schemes of Cogshire nobility. He could only "sigh" in pity as he recalled the princess who was named after the noise a steam train makes when it breaks down.

Evfimiia's abilty worried Sieve. As soon as she would perceive the clunky, tiny man it would be obvious that he was little more than a bag with bones in it. Judging by the way the merwoman was shocked while chatting with Evfimiia, he reasoned that they weren't used to seeing such diverse life forms either.

Sieve subconsciously adjusted his robes a bit before replying to the ocean woman. "If we were to return to that area, is it possible that the dimensions inside of it would be different as from before? I only hope that it doesn't have the same floor of occult white runes."

An Adventurer's Calling | [Full!]

Jessica began to carefully sniff out any mentions of the number one. This required her to ball up her fists and get really tense. All right, one, the NUMBER one. Le numbero uno. The corndog-looking one.

A tired and hollow voice immediately caught her attention. Sweet! There's one.

"Yo!!! you with the sword!! we're on the same team bro!!" She whizzed towards her new teammate and began to introduce herself. "My name is Jessica Parker, and I'm also on team one. Together, we can make eleven!"

The brawler gave a thumbs up and winked, which combined made all who watched feel secondhand embarrassment for a split second. Jessica paused from posing to shove two whole sugar cubes in her mouth and resumed.

Blue Fog - A Survival and Society Building Game

Plague?

The black plague? That was taken care of forever ago.

Is that why you're dressed like that? Don't tell me you have spices stuffed in that beak too?

Been a few thousand years in recorded history since someone was hit by a plague.

The words launched themselves into Sieve's ribcage like metal spears. They swirled and warped his thoughts, milk of the new world and the tea of the old one mixing and squeezing his non-existent brain juices. The wand that was neatly held in front of him began to violently vibrate as his hands shivered in the way only bones could. The skeleton's entire body began to shake and shudder in surprise.

C-c-could it be?? I've been launched forwards in time?!

A paranoid gaze at those around him fed his mental instability. Merpeople, unholy fusions of man and beast mingling with their human superiors, soldiers with strange muskets and shamelessness. Yes, shamelessness surrounded every pocket of his bone-vision. Exposed ankles, elbows and collarbones as far as two sockets could see. There was even the occasional shoulder. The worst offender was the grey automaton, who stood naked and proud among the group.

The doctor began to quickly adapt to the future in front of him. With a hollow laugh he spoke again, with the recognizable voice of a shrill british man. "Hee, hee. It appears I am also hungry, starved I might add. I am also winking, although you cannot see it, as I am wearing a uniform. Hee, hee."

Sieve wasn't going to win an award for his performance, but it was the best the skeleton could manage under the surge of new information. The plague had been defeated and the world wasn't a big steampunk hellfire junkyard! Yippee! But at the same time, why did he have access to wind magicks? How did he end up here? Why was that silver machine still naked? Sieve would have to find out some other time and roll with it.

An Adventurer's Calling | [Full!]

"Everywhere you look........everywhere you go,... there's a heart.......... a hand to hold onto..."

"EEEEEeeaauuuuuuuuuuuuuughhh oooooooooooooo"

Jessica violently slammed her face onto the table, aligning her spiritual and physical forms like shaking a ketchup bottle. A stranger gently placed a tablet on top of her head in the middle of this process, helping to awaken her somewhat.

The fairy seated near her had asked her something earlier, but she couldn't at all remember. Still, it seemed strange that he was nervously staring at her. The brawler thought about breaking the silence. "Don't cha know it's rude to stare at people?" She said with a wink. The tablet that was on top of her head fell loudly while this happened.

After staring at the contraption with glazed, emotionless eyes for several seconds Jessica finally registered that it had text and such. She heard all about this word business in her years of school. Letters made words, and if you got enough words together, then baby, you got yourself a sentence! And don't even get her started on paragraphs. Still, the concept hurt her head, which was used to thinking via the mental version of crude microsoft paint drawings. She furiously furrowed her brows and began to think. This...... process.... was stopped by a glowing number.

Immediately her face shriveled in disgust. Eaugh, numbers. Those are just letters but with extra steps.

Still, after listening to a solid twenty percent of the woman's instructions it was clear that they would determine the teams that would form. The blonde stared at the "one" that was displayed on the device. Jessica beamed proudly, brighter than the number. One! the number everyone knew! It was the first number, unless you counted the number zero. The thought caused her disdain to double. Pfft. The only dummy-dumb dweeb numbnuts who say that are stuck-up MEGA WEENIES and mesoamericans that existed in pre-columbus America using the long count calendar system.

The woman who guided them stood prepared for more questions, but Jessica didn't care too much. Instead, she energetically jumped from her sugar covered seat and cupped her gloved hands around her mouth.

"YO! does anyone in this starbucks have the number ONE????!?!?"

Blue Fog - A Survival and Society Building Game

Sieve stood proudly with his hands on his hipbones and gazed at the dead warrior rabbit. The magician's pride vanished like smoke from the creature's mouths as soon as he remembered that he wasn't wearing boots, leaving white bone exposed for all to see. He began gliding like a cat doused in water back to where he had primly set them down.

LewdlewdlewdlewdlewdlewdlewdLewdLEWDLEWDLEWD!!!

His body released the pent up air within his ribcage, sounding less like a sigh of relief and more like a blender with a brick inside of it. The mer-woman explained that their reward allowed the impromptu party to store things to a ridiculous degree. Sieve wondered what would happen if he were to place one of his bones inside of it, but snapped back to a chipper and formal tone as soon as his party members began to discuss the consumption of their opponents. The skeleton neatly held his wand horizontally with both hands and began to rattle. "Excuse me, but as a member of the Necro-organic Sanitization Squadron I advise that any and all bodies found be burned immediately to suppress the spread of plague!"

His body language remained stiff throughout his first team interaction. I'm not as strange as some of the other folk here, but it'd be wise to be hidden for a bit more, lest I be immolated.

An Adventurer's Calling | [Full!]

Jessica's body was a machine at the moment. Her right hand was picking up sugar cubes and plopping them into her mouth, and her eyes stayed fixated on Skyler's wings. Crunch, crunch, crunch. Her mind was starting to introduce the idea that perhaps all the extremities in front of her weren't a drug-induced hallucination.

Of course, Jessica has the iq of a limestone coffee table, so this process abandoned the usual critical thinking that came bundled with having and existential crisis, and jumped between the two extremes of "Real" and "Not real".

It was then that the guide began to conjure illustrations mid-air to help her narration, explaining why everyone was reborn and gathered in anime starbucks. The brawler's fists balled up and began to shake with excitement as she saw herself in one of them. Her final moments played out for all to see. "I just got shot point blank in the face! Awesome sauce!"

---

"Ma'am! Ma'am!" A Jessica in a lab coat approached another Jessica in a lab coat, their bodies being inexplicably well lit in their mushy pink office. The first Jessica straightened her back and spoke again. "I'm afraid Jessica has gone off the rails general, the realization of her death has driven her into a state of shock! She's in danger!"

Jessica the general fixed her non-prescription ornamental glasses and addressed her underling. "Jessica No. 27, tell me what happened the last time something like this took place." Number twenty-seven stammered as she recalled those events in crystal clarity.

"Y-you mean the Chuck E. Cheese incident?"

"Precisely!"

"We survived!"

"Exactly!!"

The Jessica-in-command adjusted her glasses in such a way that light dramatically shone off of them. "That's right soldier, we live and we ADAPT like WARRIORS. Now hurry up and get these trauma files placed inside her memory cabinets and ignore our evanescent existence as figurative representations of a dumb girl's subconscious."

With a firm salute from both parties, Jessica number twenty-seven shifted through the manila files, making sure to keep things nice and tidy. A file labeled "My death lmao" was gingerly slotted between others similar in appearance within the conscious memory cabinets, in between folders "Full House theme song" and "Gay thoughts". In the external world, Jessica was moaning and drooling like a zombie, ignoring all the conflict in front of her, hyperfixated on Skyler's wings.

An Adventurer's Calling | [Full!]

Jessica casually looked around the small gathering of people and wasn't at all phased by the body part potpourri going on. She recalled the time her friend Josh dared her to drink a liter of cough syrup and everyone turned into a smurf for six hours. The hallucinations would settle down in time, and all that was left to do was blend in. A courteous voice derailed her train of thought, which was heading to the "repressed memories" station before taking a quick stop at "monster truck name ideas".

"Welcome! I am Willow, the head of the guild's operations. Come, come, there is much to discuss, especially with the odd expressions you're giving me."

The blonde energetically entered the building and began to survey the area. A skyscraper-sized elf, a guy with a sword and a fairy were seated on some lovely benches. The former two looked too cautious to get beverages, which made Jessica giddy with greed until she realized that all her options were traditional. She rolled her shoulders and stretched her arms a bit before exclaiming "Man this totally sucks, there's no mountain dew here." She gazed venomously at the teapots that were near her. Ugh, leaf water.

An Adventurer's Calling | [Full!]

About the randomized teams, how will it work?:

A) Our characters "pick" their teammates
B) A RWBY-esque initiation exam "determines" our teammates
C) An IC third party determines which teams we go to.

Blue Fog - A Survival and Society Building Game

The shielded abomination began to roll at quick speeds, unable to see where our poor skeleton doctor was located. At this moment Sieve set his arms behind him, took a deep breath and began to float by a few centimeters.

At this point it's essential to establish that by no means is breathing necessary when lungs, veins, nostrils and all the mushy wet bits are taken out of the organic equation to life. Rather, our calcium hero needed to store large amounts of air inside of him in order to cast spells effectively. It wasn't "breathing" so much as it was sucking. If you asked Sieve to describe the noise made from this process he'd use cute and flowery language, no doubt referencing wind instruments and the like. If you were to ask people from other worlds they would more accurately pin the sound down as "homicidal vacuum cleaner".

In his old world he was only able to glide at slow and wobbly speeds, sparingly used to hover over the occasional oil puddle. However, after having been blessed with extensive knowledge of wind magic, Sieve found himself being able to glide around at a running speed, with the option to steer himself by twirling his robes. Sieve was learning all of this while swerving around like an idiot, dodging the catwarrior repeatedly.

With the doctor's black robes, small body and pointy mask, an outsider would have compared the scene to a mosquito divebombing a housecat. Sieve was busy screaming the entire time to really get a grip on his steering.

It was then that the strange woman who was penalized earlier began cheering. Sieve had read tales of blue-skinned humans that lived in the ocean, but never thought he'd meet a merfolk. Her boon immediately made him feel his ribcage swell with capacity, as well as cause his body to float several inches more.

Oh, how truly putrid of me. If anyone were to see under my garments.... indecent!!

It was then that an idea had occured to the mentally-blushing magician. Clumsily teetering down to the field, Sieve carefully pointed his black wooden wand. He mentally selected the location of his spell, bringing it close so as to be able to pour more energy into it. A wall of hard, reinforced air materialized between the cat and the insect. The skeleton switched hands and began the second part of his questionable plan.

"You fight like a dairy farmer! In fact, if I didn't know any better I'd even sa-"

The creature began to roll, now having heard the bony mosquito and his cries. Sieve was a little disappointed, as he spent an embarassingly long amount of time creating that insult and wanted it to sting. On impact, the beast broke the wall, causing the sound barrier contained within to pop, ringing alongside squeals of confusion. At times like this it was nice to not have eardrums.

The creature didn't have time to properly stand up before Sieve began the final step. A set of black, thin robes billowed viciously with the gale, giving Sieve the ephemeral appearance of a spectral crow. For the first time since being re-re-alive he looked hauntingly elegant. An enhanced, direct sphere of air streaked towards the opponent's head. Protecting humans from threats filled the little skeleton with something a little more substantial than air.

An Adventurer's Calling | [Full!]

THANKS FAM

This is my second time roleplaying, and my first time roleplaying as an anime character/girl so if I suck at something tell me pleese