King Cosmos

Yu-Gi-Oh!: Perils of the Night

Claire Turner

Claire was quiet in the wake of Aile’s little introduction. Normally she would try and socialise with the group, liven things up and leave her mark in people’s minds, but right now she couldn’t do anything but focus in on what the younger woman had just said.

‘Esoteric’; it didn’t necessarily mean what she wanted it to mean. It was just another word for obscure, hard to understand; the esoteric aspects of Duel Monsters could just refer to, like, damage step rulings or something. It didn’t have to have anything to do with what she was running from. This society the blonde mentioned could just be really dedicated to niche rulings for all she knew.

But she knew it wasn’t.

A bunch of wannabe judges wouldn’t arrange a midnight meeting in a cemetery and set up a lantern lit path through the darkness just to invite them to discuss the deeper aspects of chain links. Claire knew what this was. Something only further confirmed when one of the other invitees mentioned ‘psychic bullshit’; for that to be the first thing they thought of when they heard the word esoteric was telling. She wasn’t the only one experiencing weird things.

Impatiently, Claire stepped after the other duellist and grabbed a lantern of her own. “Let’s not waste time then. Let’s meet this society of yours.”

The Hunt, A Modern Fantasy Smorgasbord RP

Morgana Faith

Seeing her family home again after what was almost a decade of estrangement was… a hard experience to define. It was a familiar sight, she supposed, but none of the memories she associated with the manor were what Morgana would particularly call ‘happy’; there was no nostalgia, no longing to stroll through the doors and walk its halls, venture into its rooms and see if everything was the same as she had left it.

When she had left before Morgana had done so with the full intent of cutting herself off from her family forever; she had expected to never see this place again. There had been a sense of finality to it that now left her feeling detached from the sight she was seeing. It was her childhood home, and it wasn’t at the same time; she had forsaken it long ago.

Now, it was just puzzle to be solved in order for them to progress with this case.

Truth be told, once it became clear that her mother had some kind of connection to this case Morgana had given some thought to how one might go about breaching those defences. However, between the mess with the spirit and then the assault on the cultist camp and then their quick journey back to the UK and now here there hadn’t been much spare time for her to devote towards the task, meaning her progress was disappointing. She had not been privy to every enchantment and protection placed on the property, having left home when she was still in her late teens, but she had been told about some as a necessity of her own safety, had figured others out herself during her tutoring as a child and had theories about the rest.

Morgana was quite well versed in protective wards, seals and similar such magics; some of her ideas around the type of protections her mother and their descendants would employ came about as a by-product of her own knowledge rather than a conscious effort to breach her family’s manor. She knew what types of wards worked best, their advantages and disadvantages, their places of origin and so on. She knew what kinds of magic her family tended to favour and where those two areas of knowledge overlapped. She could surmise what she herself would have chosen and assume the same of those that came before her.

Knowledge of wards came with knowledge of how to penetrate said wards; what their weaknesses were and when not to use them. Or at least it should, if the one casting them had any kind of intelligence. That did not necessarily mean that she could break them, just that she theoretically knew how.

“Before anyone heads off to start poking around, I’ll give you the same warning I gave Madeleine when we approached the cultist’s camp. Any attempts to scry beyond the exterior of the building will be useless; perhaps your deities can manage something, perhaps not.” Useless, but not unsuccessful in the traditional sense. Witches had learned long ago that it was far more efficient to redirect efforts rather than try to block them; trying to scry inside the building would be successful, but show you nothing more than the surface of a reflective glass orb suspended in some unobtrusive corner of the building.

“Any defensive wards on the building will be old, powerful, malicious and reactive. Simply attempting to perceive them will trigger a response, so if you aren’t absolutely certain you can defend against or subvert a curse intended to harm or even kill, do not approach the boundary of the building itself; not even with your magic.” At the cultist camp Morgana had determined that they would not be using wards, as the kind that witches used tended to be large workings intended for long term use. A temporary base like the camp would not be worth warding, but the Faith family manor? The seat of their coven’s power for the past few centuries? The wards would have been established around the same time the foundations had been set, the magic would have sunk into the earth and taken root.

“Normally I would strongly advise against crossing any kind of threshold, but in this situation that may actually be our best bet. The wards around the entranceways can be raised to prevent anyone from crossing, even my mother, but given the invitation and the fact that mother would never deign to imprison herself, I believe the door are safe to cross.” Or perhaps not and her mother was simply hoping she would die as soon as she tried to set foot in her childhood home; Morgana would give even odds towards the wards imbued in her coat either saving her life or failing entirely should that be the case. But she had a feeling that was not what her mother had planned here. It simply wouldn’t be her style to set such a mundane and impersonal trap, even if harming her was her intent.

Morgana turned to Faye “We’re estranged. I haven’t spoken to my mother in years, though she has certainly spoken at me in that time. I don’t believe she would hurt me, yet. I can’t say the same for you.” Then again, it wasn’t like she had ever expected her mother to throw her lot in with whatever Mr X was either, so who was to say if her judgement was accurate or not? “I would suggest against trying to teleport inside the building; you won’t arrive where you are expecting to and there’s a chance you won’t be able to teleport out afterwards.” Redirect your enemies efforts, rather than attempt block them outright. “My family has never hunted or harmed the Fae to my knowledge, but unwanted guests were certainly never tolerated.”

Then she turned to Amanda. “I can’t say what my mother would do; I never expected her to be involved in this in the first place. It would depend on whether or not she intends to play coy and pretend ignorance, or if she is willing to go public with her involvement in… whatever this all is.” The former would be immensely frustrating, the latter could be deadly. “Those runes are new; they shouldn’t be visible like that, which suggests they are newly laid and haven’t been properly synched with the existing protections yet. They look like standard strengthening wards though; the manor’s defences have always been directed towards more esoteric threats, rather than those that my family would consider mundane.”

In other words… “The windows aren’t bullet proof and the doors aren’t reinforced. Those runes are meant to rectify that. They aren’t yet complete.”

@Kumbaris@13org

Yu-Gi-Oh!: Perils of the Night

I'm still interested.

Times like this it might just be better to skip a couple of people and let them catch-up later. Set a deadline for when the cut-off for the next post is.

The Hunt, A Modern Fantasy Smorgasbord RP

Morgana Faith

It took a moment for the words to register with Morgana. The witch was still preoccupied with trying to puzzle together Mr X’s schemes, like if she rearranged the pieces enough times the full picture would finally become apparent.

When they did, she turned towards Amanda and gave the android and incredulous look, her eyebrows rising high enough to be obscured by the brim of her hat. “Demanding.” She accepted the letter with a little more force than necessary, snatching it out of the woman’s hand as soon as it was within reach. Sharp eyes skimmed over the text, but none of the words made it past the fog of Morgana’s building temper. “Well, I suppose we’re both done with pretences.”

A flick of the witch’s wrist saw a magic circle forming in the air below the letter, a second before the paper ignited and Morgana let go of the page to let it be consumed by flames that disappeared as soon as there was nothing left to burn.

“It has been a while since I last spoke to her. Perhaps I should pay her a visit.”

@Kumbaris

Yu-Gi-Oh!: Perils of the Night

Claire Turner

What was that about leaving? Wasn’t she supposed to hop on her bike and skip town as soon as the tournament was over?

Domino City was weird, but before she had received that totally-not-ominous note from one of the judges at the card shop she was willing to dismiss that weirdness as just a feeling at the back of her neck. Now though? She was certain that there was something off with this place. More than off; she was certain that this note had some kind of connection to the monsters she had been running from for the past couple of years. Monsters that just happened to bear more than a passing resemblance to the monsters from the very card game she had been playing when this note had been given to her.

This place was dark in a way she couldn’t explain; she could feel it. And maybe it wasn’t just all in her head after all.

So she did the stupid thing and instead of taking the shortest route she could to anywhere that wasn’t here, Claire found herself stopping her bike at the main gates to the cemetery in the middle of the night. Surprisingly, she wasn’t the only person there; several other faces she recognised from the store were there too, waiting for whoever had invited them to show up; or maybe just trying to build up the courage to go inside.

The kickstand dropped into place and Claire stepped off of her bike before removing her helmet. She shook her hair out, using the extra time to steel her own nerves before she turned and approached the gathered crowd. “Looks like there’s a whole party here! But why are we all waiting outside? Instructions are supposed to be on the gate, yeah? What do they say?”

Why Were We Reincarnated as Orcs?!

Akeno

The camp was abuzz with activity when she approached from the outskirts; things apparently getting a lot more hectic as more and more of the runts came back from their hunts. The centre of the activity seemed to be Esfir; the young Orc with the air of a much older person who had all but disappeared once they had reached the caves. Whatever she had been up too back then, it seemed she had made her way back to camp too and had set up some kind of barbeque so she could start handing out cooked food.

The older woman was leveraging her knowledge from her past life from the looks of it; preparing and cooking food that the Orcs here had probably never seem or experienced before in order to set up a little business for herself, a niche within the group. You bring her meat, she turns it into sausages. Would it work? Maybe, but given the conversation she had just had with Shamar it seemed likely that Esfir would need to be ready to defend anything she managed to create for herself; either from people who just wanted to take what she had, people who were jealous, or people who looked down on a ‘runt’ who thought they could make something of themselves.

Things were already getting kind of violent around there.

The free food was tempting, nonetheless, but rather than risk the crowd Akeno decided to wait for things to calm down a bit and hope that there was still something left. When she did, maybe she’d share what little she had learned of how things worked in the tribe with the other Orc; the older woman probably knew enough to take care of herself, but it couldn’t hurt to give a friendly warning.

Other than that, things around camp were mostly the same as before. The farmer had gotten back to his work, the bullies were harassing anyone that caught their eye and the shaman had settled down in a chair. She still had no intention of going anywhere near the chief or those associated with him and still didn’t know anything about farming. Perhaps she could go and hunt something to trade with Esfir, assuming she hadn’t been robbed blind by then, or perhaps she should talk to the shaman and see if there was anything she had that needed doing. Akeno had seen her send another runt off on an errand earlier.

In fact, wouldn’t the shaman, who also looked like she filled the role of tribal elder, be more in tune with the goings on around camp than anyone else? Other than the chief at least. I mean, if she was in the habit of sitting around camp and watching the camp like she was now, then if nothing else she probably saw more of what was happening than most. It might be worth talking to her just to find out if anything significant was happening or had happened recently.

Come to think of it, what did a shaman actually do? Akeno knew that back home shamans were typically spiritual leaders or sorts, those who dealt with spirits and who handled ceremonial stuff in certain cultures; the same was probably true here as well, but what kind of spirituality did the Orcs have? What kind of rites and ceremonies did they observe? Or was the shaman more like a folk-healer, or a midwife? A storyteller? A historian?

Curiosity pulled her towards the old woman in the chair. As she approached, the shaman caught her eye and gave her a half-smile, which was probably good enough as far as invitations went. “I’m curious. When you’re not watching us all act like idiots”, starting off with humour may not be the best idea, but the words slipped out, “What is it that you do? For the tribe.”

@Zeroth

Monster Hunter x RWBY?

How do you imagine a combination between these two going? I'm pretty familiar with RWBY and I've played Monster Hunter: World at least. There are similarities between the two, with the giant transforming weapons and the big monsters, but in a lot of other ways their pretty different; particularly in tone.

In RWBY, humanity has been corralled into a small number of defensible locations by an endless time of soulless creatures whose sole purpose is to kill humans and destroy their creations; the Grimm are drawn to negative emotions and people are terrified of them.

In Monster Hunter, humanity is thriving. The monsters aren't monsters at all, they are just large animals which people gleefully study, hunt and then make hats out of. There are a few that are more intimidating, but even something like an Elder Dragon isn't really treated as a major threat beyond "Hmm, might disrupt the local ecosystem. Better go kill it". I haven't finished Iceborne yet though; maybe the really end game stuff is different.

Basically, what kind of world do you want to make from these two? Which elements are you planning on borrowing and which side does it lean more towards?

Yu-Gi-Oh!: Perils of the Night

It's a chance for our characters to get to know each other a bit as well.

I'm fine with skipping most of the tournament, since that would take a while to RP out for something that really does not matter in the slightest; we can just vote of who wins. But having us duel at least one other player does at least let us point at each other and go "hey, it you, you got a weird cemetery invite as well".

The Hunt, A Modern Fantasy Smorgasbord RP

Morgana Faith

Things were a little livelier now that the full number of their little task force was back together; well, all minus one. Most were excited to be back together and had many stories to tell; Morgana didn’t much need to hear about their battle in Minsk, but given more time she would have liked to hear more about this titan they encountered.

Still, the investigation demanded their attention once more and now that they were back together there was much more information to review. They had a wider view of what this organisation was capable of now, of just how far their influence and resources reached, but a clear picture of who they were and what they were after still alluded them.

“One doesn’t need to be a deity to amass a wealth of obscure knowledge or influence; just time, resources and dedication. In fact, obtaining the latter would be a good method of acquiring the former, so long as you were able to reach out to the right people and the right groups.” Like a coven of witches, or a person or group talented enough to combine several schools of magical theory into a powerful teleportation method. “Just because this Mr X’s organisation has access to a broad range of specialities doesn’t mean they do; aside from the teleportation magic they used to smuggle their weapons, the abominable knife the biker gang had and this titan you encountered in Minsk, nothing they’ve possessed was particularly noteworthy anyway; the Roggenwolf wasn’t even them, just a mishap caused by a man desperate to free himself from their clutches.”

Though they had seemed quite eager to get their hands on said spirit, once it was in play. The armed mercenaries that had attacked them at the gardens had been quite well equipped, though maybe not suitably prepared to deal with someone like Madeleine. It did at least suggest that they had, or thought they had, the ability to subdue the Roggenwolf. “Which is all to say, it may be a little early to jump to the conclusion that Mr X is a deity.”

Which wasn’t to say that they weren’t a deity either. They would have the resources and power necessary to build a network of this size and scope, as well as the time, but there were a number of mortals who could do the same either through sheer talent or determination or simply through generational wealth. The power and influence of someone like her mother for example was much wider than most people realised and she was hardly a god, nor alone in holding that reach.

“I must admit, I’m not able to see much of a larger picture forming here. Between the arms smuggling and the connections to gangs and cults and whoever those trainer soldiers were that came for the spirit, Mr X seems to be gathering quite a personal army for himself.” One that had somehow gone unnoticed until fairly recently, which said more about their influence than even the size of their operation did. “The compulsion placed on the banker who attacked the OMR could have been a way for their organisation to acquire funds, through embezzlement or insider trading, but just having a man on the inside of a large financial institution could be useful by itself. If they have people inside of the OMR itself as well, enough to leak information about a mission in progress, then it paints a picture of someone building up to something.” Morgana waved a hand through the air to indicate just how vague that ‘something’ was at the moment.

“But it all just seems so… scattered. Fragmented. The groups we’ve run into don’t seem to share a common goal or ideology; frankly I can’t see them working together, unless they didn’t know that they were. Even if everything we’ve discovered so far had gone unnoticed and Mr X had unleashed all of this at once, what would that actually achieve? Havoc? Death? Terror? Before they are then taken down by the OMR or the other powers that be, leaving them with… what, exactly?”

What was the goal? What was the objective? What did her mother gain from siding with these people?

What weren’t they seeing?

@Kumbaris@13org

Yu-Gi-Oh!: Perils of the Night

Claire Turner

Domino City was one of the stranger places Claire had stopped off in.

Three years on the road had let her see more of the country than most people ever would; let her spend time in multiple cities from the North of the island all the way down to the South, a bunch of smaller towns and literally everywhere in between. She’d been to enough places to be able to have favourites, to be able to make comparisons and liked to think that she had enough experience to identify the vibe a place gave off within a couple of days of arriving. And Domino City? Something about Domino City was off. The kind of off she usually only felt when she’d spent too long in one place and the nightmares that she was running away from caught up to her. The kind of off that had her checking over her shoulder and keeping a close eye on any shadows she passed. The kind of off that had her keeping a hand on the deck of cards in her pocket, as if the monsters in it might protect her somehow.

Claire didn’t think she was going to be sticking around for too long as a result. She’d finish this little event, which unfortunately didn’t even come with any prize money, stop off at the hotel to check out and then get back on her bike. Honestly, maybe even before then; usually duelling like this calmed her down, as well as giving her a good opportunity to meet new people and get some information about the place she was in. But today? Maybe it was the way the judges seemed to be paying extra close attention to all of the duels or the store owner, or maybe it was that weird lightning storm the night before, but the sense of dread kept building.

Across the table from her, her opponent asked her something that she didn’t hear and she missed an opportunity to activate a trap card when she should have. Her opponent missed lethal anyway, but it was enough for Claire to decide to focus on the duel instead of her worries.

“I activate the effect of my Siverd in the Pendulum zone to destroy my Metalfoes Combination, to set Parametalfoes Fusion from my deck. Then I activate Metalfoes Counter in response to summon a Metalfoes from my deck and chain the graveyard effect of Combination to add a Metalfoes to my hand.”

From there the rest of the duel was fairly quick, with Claire summoning two Fusion monsters to bounce their strongest monster with Mithrilium and then Pendulum summoning and attacking for a huge amount of damage with Orichalc’s piercing ability.

Beside her the judge watching their match, an attractive blonde woman with the name tag ‘Valentine’ made a note of her win and moved on to the next pair.That was the first round dealt with at least.