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Susano Hidari


The impact of the massive thing landing so close to the supply caravan rocked the rickety wooden thing like a fierce, white-crested wave slamming against the hull of a small, helpless boat, sending those poor souls aboard staggering for balance. It could be difficult, even nauseating, to no longer be able to rely on the solidity, the stability, of good earth under your feet. To be a seaman was to learn to adjust, but to be a great seaman was to make instability a part of your self, to make it the environment in which you were most comfortable. Which is all very fancy and philosophical, but is basically why Hidari was able to keep smoking his pipe when he hit the oni in the eye with a knife. It was nothing fancy, just a kozuka utility knife kept in the small groove of his sword's tsuba hand-guard, but it did the job admirably. Hidari had been rising as his left hand gripped the sheath of his blade and his right went down as if to draw and then blurred up as if in an iajutsu quick-draw strike - but when it was slow enough again to be seen, it was empty. The sword was still where it was. The knife, the one he used for peeling apples, was now splitting an oni eyeball neatly down the middle.

"Hoi, y'er a big beastie, in'cha?" Hidari's voice was never the smoothest, the most sophisticated, but apparently whatever he was saying before was his idea of 'talking posh' because the new accent was pure back-alley gutter trash. Sharp, nasal, piercing. He was rolling back inside the supply caravan not as a retreat, but to come back brandishing a bow and arrow. As the geisha's magic yanked the caravan away to safety Hidari rolled with the motion, dropping off the mobile cart and hitting the dirt just ahead of the half-blind ogre's retaliatory strike. "Gorra do betta than that, ya stinkin' wazzock. Come at me, brah! Haha!"

He slapping the yumi's haft against the ogre's rump like a flirtatious courtesan as he wheeled around into its blind spot, poking and prodding and yelling obscenities to draw it away. It was huge, inhumanly powerful - and down an eye. That was all the edge Hidari needed. "Don' worry luv, I got this one, eh!" he called to Chiyoe - and to the ogre, to let it know where he was. As he rolled away from the blind, lashing strike and kept in the thing's blind spot he carried on. "Thissun's not so fierce, are ya, boy? Mebbe al' pop a leash round yer neck and teach ya to piss 'gainst the trees! C'mon, boy!" Hidari danced back, firing an infuriating shot into the softer meat at the beast's armpit when it raised an arm to strike. He rolled away again, leading the ogre towards him with clear killing intent. That's right, boy, all eyes on me. All one eyes. Show me the beauty, eh?
Well, her idea of being called a prostitute was to have Hidari offer her a seat, a share of his pipe and a request for some biwa accompaniment. Or maybe she heard Hidari sitting there singing a happy song about how an elf maiden is a gracious host and took the ENTIRELY wrong idea (She's got a filthy mind, that Chiyoe, I tells ya)
<Snipped quote by ReapTheMusic>
*BOOING INTENSIFIES*


HidariDealWithIt.jpg

He's a guy who isn't quuiiiite as cool as he thinks he is. Of course he makes bad lines like that.
Lord Sebastian Brotherton


Physical State: Sea-chilled
Mental State: Wistful

The Majestic lived up to her name, a merciless tower of steel and luxuries that pushed across the cruel Atlantic. The new paint was still fresh on her, marking her transition from the German fleet to the British as part of the war reparations. Goodbye Reichstag; long-live Majestic. Sebastian ran a finger along the wood panelling in his cabin, wondering if a Prussian baroness had stared at the same walnut inlays or if those were just as new. He shrugged off his outer coat, unbuttoned his jacket. They had been useless to him on the deck, the sea winds cutting through the heavy wool like they were nothing. At least the cabin had a little gas fireplace and good sealing on the windows. The gas hissed lightly before the match caught it and the flame burped to life, slowly nourishing the air with orange light and warmth. He stretched like a cat in front of the blessed contraption, letting the cold out of his bones before he felt ready to do anything else.

When he at last felt up to it, Sebastian moved over to his writing desk which sat up against the adjoining wall with the next cabin. When he sat he could just make out the sounds of the record player - Rose of Samarkand. He reached into his case and pulled out a small bundle of envelopes tied together with rough, brown string. Goodbye notes, farewell messages. He had left most of them unread as a diversion for the journey; the Majestic had a telegram station he could use to reply if he particularly wished or if there was any urgency, but he currently had no intention to. Besides, there was one letter in particular he was looking forward to reading, and taking a good amount of time to read at that. Perhaps re-read a few times when the music next door was loud enough to drown out his remembering. He ran his nose along the bundle, looking for lily of the valley. There. A looping, cursive hand, little flecks of silver in black ink. Fine, thick paper stock.



Sebastian smiled softly as he read Henri's letter, holding the paper up to catch the perfume's softer nuances again before he folded the creamy paper back into the envelope with the other memories of the summer. He would be at sea another day yet, lashed by cold winter rains, and would need that warmth of remembrance to last him all the way to Arkham. He thought of the piece Henri referred to, when he modelled as Bastienne. It was one of his paramour's more technically accomplished pieces, the light that fell across his pale neck and the sharp, almost aggressive contrast conjured between his near-white skin and the violent scarlet of the long, silk kimono. He had painted his lips, styled his hair like a short, tomboyish girl, twisted and pouted. It took form in oil and canvas over three long evenings in Henri's attic; they had been lit orange by a Chinese paper lantern, drinking strong reds, laughing to themselves when the grey Polish landlady shouted at black the street cats.

Over the time he'd been reading, remembering, the small fire had now quite filled the room and he trotted back over to kill the gas and stifle the flame. When he came back to the desk, this time he pulled out the Brotherton Genealogy which had set him off on the journey to begin with. He had an old, cold lead plucked from the between the pages of this crumbling quarto; one Nathaniel Brotherton, youngest son of Sebastian's great-great grandfather Willard, had departed for the colonies in 1751 aboard Captain Heywood Duffy's St. Margaret. Nathaniel had brought his wife and two children - unnamed in the fragmentary, rushed prose - with him. The St. Margaret's route put her arriving in Massachusetts, at the harbour in Kingsport.

The only problem was he could find no other reference to Nathaniel in the family record; all the texts at his disposal originated after that point and merely referred back to historical events, leaving him to believe that for some reason Nathaniel had been simply written out of the family history and never acknowledged as existing again. Given the timing, he supposed it had something to do with the Mr. Washington's Unpleasantness, though this was never explicitly referred to. But it was Willard, Nathaniel's father, who had built much of the family fortune in quarries, mines and the like and Nathaniel vanished not long after the disaster that flooded their chalk quarry at Capenwray. Perhaps Nathaniel had earned his father's ire mis-managing the blasting of -

A knock at the door broke his line of thought. Sebastian hobbled over to the cabin door and slid it aside to see the strong, full figure of one of the cabin boys - well, this was more of a cabin man really - holding out a telegram for him. Good skin, eyes like walnuts. Sebastian offered the man a drink in exchange for the service, which was politely declined for professional reasons but met with a soft "well, perhaps once you come off your shift". The man flushed red, blustered an excuse and left quickly. Sebastian smiled devilishly as he slid the door back closed and flicked open the message card.



Sebastian set the typed card down on the dressing table and poured himself a brandy. He sipped it and managed to keep the shiver from his hands long enough to finish the tumbler. The room was suddenly cold again, as if in the time between opening the door and closing it an Arctic chill had rushed in. From the window, between the slats of the blind, a smeared coastline of sodium-yellow lights blinked on and off in the distance; they were in sight of fearsome, witch-haunted Arkham at last.
Susano Hidari


If the prophet cannot come to the mountain,
Hidari thinks to himself as a long-legged thing plonks her way down the supply caravan toward him. Perhaps his mind went to courtesans because, frankly, that's where it always was but her dress had a lot of that about her. So impractical for the journey, long and elegant. Dressing to impress, and with how long it takes to get all dolled up like that she knew exactly what she was doing. Certainly a far cry from him with his ratty topknot, his thin facial hair, his sea-tanned skin and sturdy, practical clothes. As if he didn't hear any of her comments, he reached over and broadly slapped the wood of the cabin directly next to him. "Sit, sit! We'll share the pipe."

It was at this point Hidari apparently became the most popular person in the world, the centre of attention and relished in it. Holding an arm out to the geisha in a "come here so I can put my arm around you" sort of manner, the other arm tapping out the soaked resin and putting in a new daub and lighting, as if choosing to politely ignore that the geisha had molested his person with magic, he was suddenly onset by a barrage of questions by an oni that looked like some sort of infant, with a fat face and impetuous manner and, to his credit, the pirate was firing back in kind. "Whores? Who said anything about whores? It's about elves, our gracious friends! Are you calling elves whores? Hoi, madam, you hear the mouth on this young one. She says elves are whores." If the idea of a point-toohed smile smile was supposed to be scary, it was clearly aimed at the wrong human; Hidari knew exactly how to kill oni. The same way he killed everything else. "Who thought it was a good idea to bring their baby along? Is she yours?" He turns to the geisha. "She's not yours, is she? No, you look like you'd do a much better job at raising children than whoever had her. You'd have beautiful, respectful children. Sit, sit. Maybe play along with the biwa?"

He sucks on the pipe, which was like putting it out but a bit slower, and let a low steady stream of smoke flow out from his rips like a river flow, or the coiling of a dragon. He seemed to enjoying the elf's take on the song but then suddenly, sharply yelled "Hoi there, what's the point of wasting a century learning to sing if you just forget the words? What a waste of immortality. Go back to whoever taught you music and tell them that they taught you wrong, it was a funny joke, but you'd actually like to learn for real this time, hah?" He cackled sharply at that. The pipe's back in his mouth now, still humming to the melody as he fills his lungs with scented smoke. As he lets the next lungful out, he ponders at how it seemed the female oni were flocking to him but the males were staying away, or had their eyes on the road. Maybe the song really is about how oni are "man-eaters", part of him cackles internally, though obviously some would be better at getting their 'prey' than the baby. Well, I guess she could catch a certain type of man..

He cups a calloused hand to his mouth and calls up ahead to the caravan. "HOOOOOOI! HOW MUCH FURTHER?"
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
H.P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"



The year is 1928. As Europe enjoys the fruits of its post-War restoration, America's side of the Roaring Twenties is tempered by Prohibition and the subsequent rise of organised crime, neither side quite ready for the coming Depression. New technologies - the motor car, the radio, motion pictures - have redefined modern life. As mankind fills the air with light and noise, they inch unknowingly closer to their terrible fates. For the world they prance through is not theirs, not wholly. There are things older than man, older than thought, that lurk in the dark places of the world and in the darkness between the stars. There are cults and secret societies plotting in high rooms and low cellars; there are quiet places in which the blasphemy festers. There are things man was never meant to know, and he was never at greater risk of learning them.

In the Misktanonic river valley of upstate Massachusetts lie the city of Arkham, home to the notable Miskatonic University. The ancient,
mouldering, and subtly fearsome town in which we live – witch-cursed, legend-haunted Arkham, whose huddled, sagging gambrel roofs and crumbling Georgian balustrades brood out the centuries beside the darkly muttering Miskatonic.

Shortly following the death of Dr. Henry Armitage, the head librarian at Miskatonic University's famed Orne Library, a fire broke out in the library and destroyed many valuable books. Once the fire was contained, it became clear that the fire was more than mere arson, but theft; many books from the University's special collection had been taken, including the Necronomicon. Two of Dr. Armitage's fellows at the University - Dr. Francis Morgan and Professor Warren Rice - seem especially concerned with the theft of the rare books. This is where you come in. As an associate of the University, perhaps a former student, or even a police detective or PI, you have been contacted to locate the missing books for the Orne Library.


Mm. Well, I'll start mulling over some ideas to put up another interest check for another thread we might do instead of this?
Hows this?

@LovelyAnastasiaI like how she's harassing someone for smoking when Tatsuji is right next to the supplies cart and his hair is a mass of flames. Heheh, I know where to take my next post thanks to this~


My thinking was more along the lines of Hidari's response being "if you can't go to the cathouse, sometimes the cathouse comes to you!"
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