By the time Akeno had finished her stretches something was happening but not, as it happened, the thing she was expecting. The two Orcs who had gone inside the cave still hadn’t returned and instead, their ambush was interrupted by a couple of things occurring one after another.
On the ledges above them an abnormally large rat made its way across the rocks. Or at least is was until one of those rocks suddenly began to move, lunging at the passing rodent and snapping at it with pincers and revealing itself to be some kind of insect in disguise. It didn’t look like either creature was particularly interested in them, but there was a chance their fight would bring them in their direction so it was a good idea to keep an eye on them, even if they weren’t planning on getting involved. The Orc with the club was probably right that they couldn’t do anything to the rock-thing, assuming its shell was real stone, but they could maybe try to flip it over or something to disable it.
Before Akeno could ponder that much further however something else appeared, and this time it seemed very interested in them. A ball of slime with glowing eyes and rock-like protrusions was rolling down the hill towards them and, either intentionally or accidentally, was on a collision course with their group. The club-wielding Orc stepped forward and took a big swing at the thing, sending it back the way it came but apparently not killing it or scaring it off. The slime slithered towards them with an angry expression and, after absorbing a few small stones into its body, fired one at the Orc who had hit it.
Akeno left Grunthor to deal with that himself, instead choosing to use its inattentiveness of her to dash around to the side and draw closer to it while it was occupied. The stone within its body had begun to glow before it was fired, which Akeno took to mean it had used some kind of skill rather than just spitting the rock out; hopefully that meant it couldn’t do that forever, or not that quickly. If nothing else, the glow might give her some warning of an incoming attack.
Running until she was maybe ten feet to the slime’s left, Akeno came to a stop and drew her arm back. Given how it had bounced back from being hit by a club like that, she assumed it wouldn’t be too affected by her punches and kicks. Instead, Akeno decided to try out her new skill, conjuring a ball of fire in the palm of her hand and throwing it overarm at the slime’s side.
It paid to pay attention to your instincts when dealing with the Warped. If you thought you saw something out of the corner or your eye or that you heard something? You did. Either go see what it was, or regroup somewhere defensible. If you thought you were being watched? You were. Find out by what and where from. If you have a bad feeling? Well, she always had a bad feeling so maybe that wasn’t the best example.
The point was, as soon as Rose had even an inkling that something bigger than an Oni was stalking the battlefield, she abandoned the fight against the chaff and put all of her focus on anticipating where the attack would come from.
She didn’t have to wait long. The Warped that burst out of the rubble before Rose had eve begun to look for it, the weasel-like creature moving swiftly across walls and along rooftops to close the distance to her in a way that made it difficult for her to track or prepare to defend. Soon it was close enough to pounce and it wasted no time in doing just that, leaping from a rooftop and lunging at her with arm blades not too dissimilar from her own.
Rose grimaced, but from a distance it could have been mistaken for a smirk as the pilot dashed forward so that the Warped would pass over her head rather than crash straight into her. Now that it was fully committed to its dive there was nothing it could do about her sudden change of location other than try to swipe at her as it passed above. She barely managed to bat one claw aside with her own and ducked under another, before taking a slash of her own at the inside of its hind leg and leaving a long but shallow cut there.
It landed past her, forepaws touching the ground first and swinging its whole body around so that when the back legs touched down it was already facing her ready for another charge. Rose had already turned around too, staring the creature down with her body leaning forward and arms poised for another attack, looking just as ready to lunge as the Warped was; there would be no retreating from this battle anyway, no backing down. It was too fast and too deadly to try running away from and too large to try defending against. She needed to kill it, before it killed her; simple as.
Tom was procrastinating. There wasn’t really any other way to put it.
He wasn’t running late. He wasn’t lost and trying to find his way; this was his damn hometown for one thing and was too small to get lost in to begin with for another. He wasn’t taking his time.
He was just… trying to put off deciding if he was actually going to go through with this.
Things would have been simpler if he had never won the lottery. Then he could just say it was bad luck and go back to beating his head against the wall that was trying to be an independent trainer. Maybe he would have even seen the Champion and the lucky lottery winners pass him by like everyone else did and he could scoff at them and say it only happened because they got a free ride and he didn’t. The indignation from that would give him another little boost so he could keep trying for a little longer. Hell, things would have been better if he had never entered at all.
But he had won, by some miracle or curse. His ticket had been chosen and he was given the chance to take that free ride with the others. And he was having a hard time coming to terms with that, knowing that he would have sneered at the kids who won in his place if he hadn’t.
Because that? That would make him a hypocrite. It would mean all of the things he had said and the fights he had had about exactly this kind of thing and how right he had felt as he had said them were actually wrong; it would mean he was wrong. It would mean he had wasted his time, his Pokémon’s time, but doing things wrong this whole time. Except, if he had done things differently then he would even have his Pokémon would he? He would have different Pokémon and any choice that meant he didn’t have Storm and Night with him had to be the wrong one, right?
But god, he was so sick of not making any progress.
So, it wouldn’t hurt to just go along with this for a little while, get passed this one hurdle and then go his own way, right?
Right.
With a sigh, Thomas picked up his backpack and pushed off of the wall he had been leaning against. It was a short walk to the meeting place, he had only been right around the corner as he made his decision after all, and he soon found himself only a few paces away from the Champion himself. Thomas looked eyes with the man, but didn’t say anything for a few seconds as he just stared, words he didn’t know the form of right at the tip of his tongue.
Then he broke eye contact and went to sit at the end of the bench as far away from the man as he could.
Fifty feet above the ground, the claws digging through the concrete finally lost momentum and Rose was left hanging from the side of a building overlooking the ruined street. The other had all already hit the ground and started engaging the Warped, carving through the lesser enemies with ease.
Seeing as how they had it covered for now, she saw no rush to join them; instead, she used her vantage point to get a view of the battlefield and kept an eye out for anything troublesome. She knew first-hand how quickly things could get out of control or how fast one of the stronger Warped could bear down on you, but so far none of the bigger threats seemed to have noticed them or had enough time to reach their front lines; they would in time, they always did, but for now it was just Oni and slightly bigger Oni they had to worry about.
Deciding that she’d slacked off enough, Rose pulled her claws free from the concrete and pushed off of the building with both feet, angling herself towards a dense pocket of Warped as she launched herself down the street to catch up with the others.
She descended upon the Oni like a whirlwind of blades, twisting her body to lash out with both arms at the nearest Warped to decapitate two at the same time. As she landed, she pirouetted around and whipped her spiked tail into the temple of another, knocking them off their feet and piecing their skull in the same motion. Then they closed in, aware of her now, but more sweeps of her arms meant that she was soon standing alone in a circle of dismembered, decapitated and bisected Oni.
Letting out a sigh, Rose turned her head to locate the next largest grouping of Warped and began to walk in that direction. Her claws could easily deal with these smaller variants, the over-sized blades slicing them to ribbons, but the larger ones where a pain since she couldn’t cleanly cut through them all the way.
She didn’t like leaving anything alive long enough to be a threat to her.
Oh, so they weren’t going to be taking part in the assault, but rather Madeleine was to go in by themselves while she and Xaviron followed at a distance? Well, she supposed that meant her complaints about her skillset not being taken into account were a bit presumptuous.
That was a relief. Though if Morgana were being honest, she didn’t much like the idea of Madeleine going in alone; true, neither she nor Xaviron were the best suited to back her up, but surely they could have requested backup from the local OMR office for this task? The intent may have been to give the cultist a chance to negotiate, but nothing she had seen of them thus far suggested that they would be amenable to that; there was no chance that this ended in another other than another fight. And Madeleine would be fighting alone, most likely. The division of labour really was skewed if this was how things were going to end up.
But unless Morgana was willing to voluntarily step into the line of fire, the only thing she could do to help was provide information on the kind of threats she might face. In truth, she thought it unlikely that her mother would teach the cultist anything; knowledge was power, as the saying went, and power was influence. If there was anything her mother coveted if was influence and she would not lessen hers by sharing power without a very good reason. “That’s quite a broad topic, witchcraft covers many disciplines, but I don’t think you have much to worry about; my mother is… prideful. Even supposing she is in league with this group, either as an ally or just taking their money, she wouldn’t lower herself as to teach them anything important and would never give away any of our families’ secrets.
“An assault on the Faye ancestral manor would be exceedingly difficult, even for the OMR, but this?” Morgana gestured vaguely to encompass their surroundings, which were decidedly rural. “They won’t have been given access to anything that another witch of moderate skill wouldn’t have also access to. But assuming they have been given support, they will be more or less immune to most scrying attempts, will be protected from all but the most determined of curses and the defences will be mostly retaliatory in nature. A curse for a curse is the way witches work.”
They would not be using wards exactly, at least not in the way that Morgana did. Those were not typical for witches and the kind they did make use of were the kind that needed time and effort to produce; the kind that sank into the foundations and strengthened themselves through time and repetition. But witches balls, witches bottles and other such trinkets? They were simple, easy to make and effective; witches had been selling them to suspicious villagers to protect them from evil for centuries and when they wanted them to they worked.
The ones made by skilled witches could be particularly vicious too.
“Avoid crossing any thresholds, just to be safe, and it would be best if you stuck to non-magical means of combat as much as possible. While it should be fine for you to use magic that is not based on the principal nature of cursing an individual, I can’t say that there won’t be some backlash if you throw a fireball or the like at someone. If you want to use magic at all then the more indiscriminate the better; the defences should be thwarted if you don’t target anyone directly.”
Individual protections and protection of the household. The tradition of English witchcraft was one of curses, both ‘creation of’ and ‘protection again’; for a long time the greatest enemy of witches were other witches and that caused their practices to develop along a certain line. But that didn’t mean they hadn’t adapted their methods to be broader when different magical practices became increasingly common.
“Hmm. Don’t break anything made of glass, other than windows of course; things that look like ornaments, bottles and so on. I can safely disarm those later and they may provide a clue to their origin.”
If the did have anything created by her family or on their instructions, then it was best is she deal with it personally.
It's not that the way you guys did things was bad---it's always on the GM to introduce plot, I could've easily sent something at you guys at any time! I didn't intend to make the statement feel like a barb or anything, sorry!
Nah, our group did just post up in one location and grind skills for several pages; you gave us a whole goblin tribe war to stick our noses into and we didn't bite. Everyone else had stuff going on, but I kind of regret not doing more with the setting.
The skill system was so cool though.
Now why in the world would you say that? Do you know something about the Flak Beetle that others don't? 😉
Of course not. I just think throwing a fireball at that beetle would be a very cool, brave and heroic thing for someone not me and standing very far away from me to do.
Update is go! As always, let me know if anything was missed, concerns, clarity etc!
Also, in the interest of bolstering more activity, does anyone have anything they think has maybe not quite been up to par they'd like to suggest fixes for? I know most of you are basically ambush hunting/tracking and thus literally have to kinda wait for stuff passively to happen, but I don't want to run into some of the same stagnation problems I had last time when I ran "I, the Demon King, Will Summon My Own Damned Heroes!" (also known by the fan name for its anime adaptation, KusoYuusha!) The fact that the System gives you quest and exploration prompts is an effort towards that, but if there's anything else that could be done I'd love to hear your takes!
Yeah, I figured the "kill and eat to gain skills" thing was a response to us playing around with magic in the forest and never actually doing anything to explore or advance the plot.
I don't know. Personally I don't like it when the groups get too big in this as it makes responding to everyone harder, but you've been consistently pushing us together; I get why you do it, but I personally find it makes things harder and I end up ignoring peoples posts.
But I think a lot of the slowness is just us still being little baby orcs with not a lot of options; not really sure how to fix that but hopefully we can wrap this first quest up soon and get back to camp to have some options. I'm also hoping for some more personal interactions this time around. I want to write a character, not a power gamer this time; but that's on me to do, and whoever else wants that, not you.
Also, holy shit, is that a Flak Beetle! Someone that isn't me should totally throw fire at that thing.
Waiting had always been a difficult task for Akeno.
Well, not ‘waiting’ exactly, but the ‘doing nothing’ that came with waiting around was something that she just couldn’t stand. So whenever she had to wait for something, whether it was waiting for a friend to show up or waiting a class to start or waiting between rounds of a tournament, Akeno would always try to find something to occupy her time. She would do her homework in the hallway outside the classroom or she would practice katas even though she should be conserving her energy and if she couldn’t do anything productive, then she would read; there was always a book in her bag, even though reading usually bored her, because reading a boring book was better than doing absolutely nothing.
And because she got in trouble for doing katas in school once, so she had to find something else.
She supposed that made her an impatient person, but doing nothing just… bothered her in a way she couldn’t articulate. But as everyone else either prepared to head into the cave or readied their weapons or set up traps, Akeno found herself with nothing to really do. Her weapon, as dumb as it probably was, was her body and she had no idea how to go about making a trap; even though baiting the thing in the cave outside the cave so they could fight it, she really didn’t have anything more to contribute beyond that initial idea. Not until the fighting started anyway.
So she filled the time in by stretching; limbering up the arms and legs of a body not used to hard labour or physical effort; a body that hadn’t seen bruises or cuts; hadn’t bloodied its knuckles or sprained its ankles or exerted itself to the point that every muscle hurt the next day. Not yet anyway.
She wasn’t looking forward to the aches tomorrow would bring.
As she was trying and failing to bend forward and touch her toes, the orc who had been punching the tree, the boxer, spoke up and asked about the plan. It was a fair question to ask, but unfortunately all Akeno could do in response was to straighten up and shrug.
“I’ll probably throw a fireball or two but… no, that’s pretty much as far as I got. I don’t think any of us really have the skills or material to do anything more than what we are right now and the person who’s idea it was to come here in the first place disappeared, so…” Another shrug. “We bait. We pummel. And if it’s too tough, we run.”
"Sometimes I wonder if I made the right decision, starting out the way I did. But whenever I get a win, and I feel like I earned it? That feeling lets me know I chose right."
Character name: Thomas Thorne
Sex: Male
Age: 16
Appearance: Thomas is a little on the short side at only 5’ 6” but makes up for that with an abundance of energy instead. He is physically fit, believing that a trainer must work as hard as their Pokémon and lead by example to succeed. His pale skin is contrasted by his black hair and equally dark eyes; brown, but a shade so dark they appear black at a glance. In terms of clothing he prefers things that are touch and durable, so as to last a while on the road; the only exception to this is his muffler, a red and black scarf given to him by someone important.
Personality: In a nutshell, you could describe Thomas as a hot-headed youth with a chip on his shoulder; energetic and boisterous, he is someone with a lot of passion whose quick temper can often get the better of him. His passion serves him well when it drives him to put effort into a task or when he needs to overcome setbacks, but has also served to alienate him from his peers due to the number of fights he has gotten into with them.
This has led him to become intensely loyal to those who have stuck by him in turn, which for the most part is just his Pokémon; should he make other friends they too will be able to always count on him to take their side, right or wrong.
Bio: Like many young boys, Thomas wanted to become a trainer when he was a kid. Unlike most, he grew up in New Bark town, home to the lab of a genuine Professor of Pokémon and as such had a small chance of being one of those lucky folks chosen to be some kind of research assistant and given a Pokémon to give him a head start on his journey. It was something that he saw happen every now and then, when some kid a few years older than him would go into the lab and come out a few minutes later with a shiny new Pokéball in hand and a determined look on their face as they ran off down the path that led out of town.
It should have been his dream to be like them. If he wanted to be a trainer then he should have wanted to be called into that lab too some day; to stare at that building from his bedroom window with starry eyes. But instead, whenever he saw one of those kids leave town with a rare and powerful Pokémon that no other trainer starting their journey had access to he couldn’t but think that it felt… cheap. Unfair. Like the victories you would get afterwards would feel unearned, somehow. Thomas said as much as to some of the other kids in town and quickly found out that this was an unpopular opinion, since he wasn’t the only one who wanted to become a trainer but was apparently the only one who thought getting a strong Pokémon from the professor was somehow ‘cheating’.
He got into a lot of arguments when he was younger and more than a few fights, because kids will argue about anything they think is important and Thomas was always someone to let his temper get the better of him. His opinions about the right way to become a trainer were a common reason for these fights, but hardly the only one. Each fight only drove his opinions deeper, gave him more reason to cling to them and turn them into convictions, to stubbornly claim that he didn’t need any help to become a trainer and boldly state that he wouldn’t take one of the Professor’s rare Pokémon even if he was offered one.
Years later, when he was at about the right age to become a trainer himself, Thomas took the money he had been saving up and bought a bunch of Pokéballs and without even glancing at the building the Professor called his lab set off into the woods to catch a Pokémon of his own. It was harder than he had expected and took all of the Pokéballs he had, but he managed to do it and soon found himself running down the same path out of town that he had watched many trainers before him run down; the Pokéball in his hand decidedly less shiny and the look on his face more stubborn than determined. He would challenge the eight gyms and beat them; he would tackle the Elite Four and even the Champion if he wanted to. And he would do it all without any help or hand-outs and with nothing but the hard work of him and his Pokémon to thank for it.
It didn’t go well.
As it turned out, being a trainer was kind of difficult and Thomas didn’t seem to have any particular talent for it. Despite leaving home a full year ago, he has to begrudgingly admit he’s barely in the same league as most trainers just starting their journey and has only managed to catch a single other Pokémon so far. He has yet to challenge the first overseer and currently doesn’t feel like he would stand much of a chance against them even if he did. Sometimes he’ll see another trainer come along with their shiny Pokéball and bad filled with items and watch as they just overtake him in an instant.
It was right when he was thinking of giving in and crawling back home when he saw the announcement about the Champion retaking the gym challenge and the lottery for trainers to join him on that journey. Entering that lottery would mean going back on what he’d said as a kid; sure, it wasn’t quite the same as having the Professor set you up to become a trainer, but it was definitely a huge helping hand for someone like him to tag along with the Champion. It would still mostly be up to him if he won or lost, but he wouldn’t be able to say he did it entirely on his own or say for sure that he could have done it without the Champion’s help. It was… a harder decision than it should have been, submitting his name to the competition and he couldn’t help but think he was betraying something when he did. But hey, it wasn’t like he was even going to win, so what did it matter? Right?
Now he doesn’t know what to think.
Inventory: Food mostly, a basic first aid kit and a sleeping bag.
Team Info
Name: Storm
Species: Yamper
Ability: Ball Fetch
Moves: Tackle, Tail Whip, Nuzzle
Nature and Personality: Jolly. Energetic, friendly and with a positive attitude that can’t be dampened no matter what. They say that a Pokémon’s personality changes to match the owner, but if anything Storm’s good cheer is changing Thomas rather than the other way around.
Held item: None
Name: Night
Species: Poochyena
Ability: Quick Feet
Moves: Tackle, Howl
Nature and Personality: Naughty. Wilful and stubborn, Night doesn’t like to listen to his trainer most of the time and finds it amusing to cause him problems. He is more subdued around people and Pokémon he doesn’t know and being disobedient seems to be a sign that he is comfortable enough with you to do so.
Member
Snowdrops
Fading Memory
Lildear18
vietmyke
Iamme
Rune_Alchemist
Fetzen
Danyel
GubGar
