Munk

Crimson Company

She'd been here twice before.

As remote as it was, Esterfell was hardly an ideal destination in Sonia's line of work. Taking someone here meant heading back to Esminster or Wastoces without a client. No pay, in other words. Sonia couldn't exactly raise her prices for trips to the north either—she was already scratching at the limit of what people were willing to pay her—so instead, whenever a contract took her to remote places like Esterfell, she allowed herself a day or two of rest. Esterfell was a fine place to get magnificently drunk.

Tonight, though. Tonight was work.

The first letter had been passed to her upon returning to the Lizard's Head Inn in Sirondius from a short job in the south. Her suspicion at being targeted like this was assuaged by promises of adventure and money, both of which had been in short supply for Sonia for some time now. The second had detailed where and when she was to be present.

She had worries, of course. She took orders well, but she trusted nobody's judgment more than her own. If her experiences with other mercenaries were to be trusted, there would be others like her. And she didn't actually know what this Crimson Company wanted her and the others to do. There was potential for trouble there. Still, as dirt road gave way to starlit cobbles and she breathed in air that carried a promise of winter to come, she couldn't help but feel a leaping sensation in the pit of her stomach. This was adventure. She clucked, nudging Petrus onward.

She found the Spotless Rock, recalling the way to the inn with relative ease. Even at night, a boy, no more than nine years old, seemed more than happy to take her mount at the promise of a coin upon leaving. Already she heard voices from the inn. Was she late to the meeting?

She pushed open the door. It wouldn't appear so. It was obvious who she was meeting: A group of people were loosely congregated at one end of the inn. If they'd received any important messages, it was certainly over now. People seemed to be drinking and getting to know each other.

Quick head count; ten of the inn's patrons seemed to be here for the same purposes as her. Sonia felt a glimmer of the Gift from a couple of them—those she made note of first. Her eye caught on a gorgeous elven woman wearing just about nothing. She grinned despite herself. In this cold? Elves..

Sonia nodded at the innkeeper, unsure if he remembered her, then slipped off her gloves and produced one of the letters. Holding it up, she addressed the group:

"What have I missed?"

Crimson Company

Redwing said
Sometimes more, sometimes less. Remember you're only a small part of this roleplay and if people are lagging behind because you post seven or eight times a day while people are working or sleeping, well they may just drop out. Ironically sometimes posting too much can cause a roleplay to die out.Just have some patience, find another roleplay to be part of that's more fast paced, write things other than roleplay, there's lots of things you can do to fill up your time while you wait.

Definitely on board with this. I have a hard time playing in really fast-paced RPs, especially because the Guild's busy hours seem to be between, like, midnight and six in the morning in my time zone. I either have to play catch-up with twenty posts every time I post (meaning fuckin' huge posts that take forever to write) or ignore a lot of the action. Makes it really tough to enjoy.

Crimson Company

Only like twice a day? Shit, I'm lucky if I get to post once a day :D

Crimson Company

LokiLeo789 said
We are not that far in yet, you could easily introduce your self and be done with itAny way ima try and do the sleep, seems guys in da morning.

Yeah, I was thinking more, like, keeping up in the future. But let's see how it goes. Sleep tight!

Crimson Company

Hoo boy, y'all been busy. Not sure I'll be able to keep up at this rate, but I'll give it a shot.

Crimson Company

Sonia Fallows

Name: Sonia Fallows

Race: Human

Gender: Female

Age: 32

Appearance:


Height: 5'8"

Weight: About 140 lbs

Class: Warrior mage?

Skills: Travelling unseen—or at least unharmed—on Sironde's lonely roads fosters a certain set of skills. While quite proficient at fighting, both with sword, spear and fists (and, at least until losing her right eye, bow), Sonia's true talents lie in tracking, trapping and surviving in the wilderness. She's also a fairly skilled rider.

Powers: Sonia's an illusionist, albeit not a very powerful one. Without providing an extensive list of her capabilities, her powers don't extend much further than creating a distraction, hiding in plain sight when camping in the woods, turning away a pack of dogs, stuff like that.

Weaponry: A battered steel sword, an axe, an oaken bow rarely used these days.

Other equipment:
Knife
Flint and steel
Two bedrolls
Provisions for a few days
A water skin
Flint and steel
Two coils of rope

Apparel: Sonia's armor is the most expensive thing she owns. It's a light chainmail armor (well, relatively light. It's chainmail after all), with shoulder pads and everything, over a plain leather jack. Cost her four months of bodyguard work.

Beneath her armor, Sonia's clothes are plain—a long wool shirt, a pair of hide trousers, belts, pouches, a large green cloak, and a pair of boots, well-worn to a greyish no-color. And, of course, her eye patch.

Personality: Sonia meets the world around her with a brisk geniality. Though good-natured, she doesn't have much of a sense of humor. She enjoys the companionship of other travellers; as long as she's not on the road, anyway. As such, if possible, she often spends time between jobs in taverns and hostels where there's company (and work!) to be found. On the road, however, she prides herself on her independence, and she doesn't like having to defer to the judgment on others. In her eyes, her intuition and experience are all she needs.

She's fiercely protective of those she guards, especially if they're women and children.

Bio: If you need to travel the roads of Sironde, and you don't have the luxury of travelling in large numbers, you're an easy target for bandits. That goes double if you're a woman. For the eight or so years Sonia's been a sellsword, her primary business has been providing safe passage for those who would be preyed upon alone—for a fee, of course.

Almost twenty years earlier, she was the last person to suspect this would be her life. In the small farming community known informally among its inhabitants as Wayholt, she was considered quite the catch. A fairly good-looking, strong young woman with a touch of the Gift to boot? Now that was something. As such, it was to nobody's surprise that at the age of fifteen, she was long since married. Her betrothed, Jarod, was no sentimental or loving husband, but he was a good man, and Sonia was satisfied. She'd gotten a better deal than many other girls her age.

Then came the war. With the Dominion otherwise occupied, enterprising criminals had the run of the land, as long as they stayed away from towns and villages large enough to warrant Vanguard protection. In Wayholt, the villagers had been torn between sending men to fight for the Dominion and keeping everyone here to tend and protect the farms. In the end, they sent half their able-bodied men, one of them Jarod. The rest stayed behind, keeping a wary eyes in both directions of the dirt road that joined the loosely knit farmsteads. And of course, towards the end of the war, when the bandits came, it made no difference. They were too many, they were too well armed, too experienced. Sonia had heard rumors about how the bandits treated the women of the villages they raided, they all had, and she had no intention of sitting around waiting to be raped and murdered. Or worse, raped and sold to some orc warlord. She and one of the men—Petre, only a year younger than Sonia, gathered the younger women of the village and led their escape through a field yet to be harvested. He and Caroline Jent took arrows to the back, went down in the tall crops. Sonia led the rest of the girls at a sprint to the edge of the forest, drawing hasty runes in the air to mask their true position. In the cover of the trees, they hunkered down until darkness fell, not daring to light a fire or even lie down for fear of breaking the brittle spell Sonia'd cast over them. One bandit came close to stepping on them. Scared and furious, Sonia buried a sickle in his throat. When the sun set, they saw the bandit heading south, flames rising from Wayholt, and they dashed in the opposite direction. They weren't followed.

They walked for two days before being picked up by a heavily armed trading caravan heading for Esminster. They took just about everything the girls had brought with them but the clothes on their back, but in return, they took them to the city with them. Some of the girls had distant family in the Esminster, and there they laid low for a few months. Something nagged at Sonia, though. She and the girls had gotten lucky, finding a caravan full of fairly honest people who took nothing but their scant possessions. Other women would be out there, less fortunate. They'd need safe transport as well. Sonia seemed to have a skillset to facilitate that (and if she had to be perfectly honest, she felt a sort of crazed joy at getting her girls away mostly unharmed). She played the role of bodyguard for a couple of women who needed to leave the city quickly, and found she did quite well.

Thus, she found her new calling: protecting unaccompanied women and children (and the odd frightened scribe) travelling though Sironde. It's cost her many scars—and an eye to a particularly stubborn bandit—but she likes to think the women of Sironde are a little bit safer these days. She hasn't seen Jarod in nine years. She rarely thinks of him.

Game Ideas

Fuck, I can't even articulate how glad I am that the games industry is moving away from the idea of the "real gamer" community. The types of people who play games—and the types of games we play—have been diverse since basicaly forever, and I'm loving that we're finally recognizing it (of course it does mean a surge in shitty developers making shitty games that are 90% in-app purchases, but that's basically what happened back in the eighties and early nineties as well, and gaming came away okay from that). It's about time the "real gamer" brand was watered down. Games are going to be so much better.

Personally, I'd like to see a lot more of what Shadow of Mordor apparently does with its NPCs. I want procedurally generated NPCs that live their lives out whether I'm there or not. I want a world that doesn't feel like it revolves around me (even if the game itself isn't really open-world), NPCs with more than six scripted behaviours. I imagine that's a lot of fucking work, but it's so satisfying to play in a world like that.

Oh, and Fallout 4. Gimme.

Crimson Company

Hey, okay, this looks nice! I'm considering a warrior mage or a druid. I'll see how it goes. Probably the latter—we seem to have more than enough people proficient at killing stuff. Lessee, we have a ranger, a warrior, a rogue, a bard... hm, okay, I'll get on it.

Long-Distance Tabletop Roleplaying?

I've played some Apocalypse World hacks with some people from here over Skype and http://roll20.net. It works just fine. Of course, in my eyes, AW really shines when you're not dependent on maps and figures and whatnot. It's definitely a different experience from playing around an actual table, but it's still a lot of fun.

Depending on the details (which game, frequency of sessions etc.) I'd totally be up for playing!

You Get What You Give

I gotta say, I'm a little skeptical—master marksman, parkour champion, great at unarmed combat and a lawyer at 25? Seems like a case of Batman Syndrome™ to me. I love the idea of a 21st century band of merry men, but maybe we could keep it a little closer to a real-world group of criminals?