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There's Always a Price: Sci Fi Bounty Hunters

“Huh,” Jocasta said, giving Dirk the side eye as they coasted in to the beach with a crunch. She reminded herself there was a lot she didn’t know about her putative partner and his history with Neo-Mecca was far from uneventful. That might or might not be a problem, though this was hardly the time to think too deeply on it.



They were clearly getting closer to the heart of this hap hazard little party now. Jocasta had sent a drone to watch the port, which was separated from the communications island by about a kilometer of open water. That was a sensible security precaution as it made it difficult for someone to take control of the docks and the communications hub before the alarm was raised. These yahoos, whether by luck or good judgment, had obviously managed it. The feed from the port was a little problematic. A dark gray dragonfly drone, one of the small portion of her fleet hijacked by Cygi, was dog fighting with her own but the pair of them managed to make up a decent feed between them. Barges were beginning to arrive at the docks laden down with credit chips, liquor, jewelry, paintings, bedding, and anything else anyone might think of carrying off. Teams of men were hauling the loot from the boats to a docked luxury liner registered as The Lady Godiva. These men were not dressed in armor, but a mixture of clothing that ranged from the gaudy to the ridiculous. One man was dragging a marble statue while wearing a suit of white silk with a half dozen pea cock feathers sprouting from a kaftan. It was far too small for him and the seams at the arms had burst open. Another man wore a fantastic dress of nebula silk, its flaring red fabric really setting off his stubble and prison tattoos. Jocasta shook her head unable to credit it.



“It dosen’t look like our friends are planning on being here in…”

“Smoke, smoke, smoke!” Dirk yelled and shoved her bodily over the side before diving on the beach after her. His armored form landed atop her, arms and knees bent so as not to crush her. A trail of smoke and fire ripped from a grove of palm trees and smashed into the airboat with a cataclysmic boom. Pieces of debris pinged musically off Dirks armor as the heat and overpressure passed them by. He stood up and started firing his blasters at the grove, which was now on fire as a result of the backblast of the missile which had evidently been concealed there Jocasta spat out some stand and started to run up the beach towards the cover of the expensive landscaping, her drones zipping along in front of her in a flying V. A man wearing an armored chest plate stepped out from behind a fountain and swung a rifle to bear. One of the drones cut past him, ducking its wings in as it went so that the molecules thin wing membranes cut across his cheeks like flying shrapnel. He yelled and swatted at his face before the blue beam of Jocasta’s pistol removed cut and face in a sizzling blast of energy. Across a manicured lawn she saw a half dozne men burst from the main communications building. One of them was piloting a suit of armor so heavy it might have qualified as a mech, each leg easily as thick as a full grown garamon tree and as wide across the chest as a dumpster. The air split as he fired the machine guns attached to each arm in the air, raining down flaming palm fronds and coconuts.



“huh…” Jocasta temporised, and then turned and ran back down the beach as fast as her legs could carry her.

There's Always a Price: Sci Fi Bounty Hunters

“Huh,” Jocasta said, giving Dirk the side eye as they coasted in to the beach with a crunch. She reminded herself there was a lot she didn’t know about her putative partner and his history with Neo-Mecca was far from uneventful. That might or might not be a problem, though this was hardly the time to think too deeply on it.



They were clearly getting closer to the heart of this hap hazard little party now. Jocasta had sent a drone to watch the port, which was separated from the communications island by about a kilometer of open water. That was a sensible security precaution as it made it difficult for someone to take control of the docks and the communications hub before the alarm was raised. These yahoos, whether by luck or good judgment, had obviously managed it. The feed from the port was a little problematic. A dark gray dragonfly drone, one of the small portion of her fleet hijacked by Cygi, was dog fighting with her own but the pair of them managed to make up a decent feed between them. Barges were beginning to arrive at the docks laden down with credit chips, liquor, jewelry, paintings, bedding, and anything else anyone might think of carrying off. Teams of men were hauling the loot from the boats to a docked luxury liner registered as The Lady Godiva. These men were not dressed in armor, but a mixture of clothing that ranged from the gaudy to the ridiculous. One man was dragging a marble statue while wearing a suit of white silk with a half dozen pea cock feathers sprouting from a kaftan. It was far too small for him and the seams at the arms had burst open. Another man wore a fantastic dress of nebula silk, its flaring red fabric really setting off his stubble and prison tattoos. Jocasta shook her head unable to credit it.



“It dosen’t look like our friends are planning on being here in…”

“Smoke, smoke, smoke!” Dirk yelled and shoved her bodily over the side before diving on the beach after her. His armored form landed atop her, arms and knees bent so as not to crush her. A trail of smoke and fire ripped from a grove of palm trees and smashed into the airboat with a cataclysmic boom. Pieces of debris pinged musically off Dirks armor as the heat and overpressure passed them by. He stood up and started firing his blasters at the grove, which was now on fire as a result of the backblast of the missile which had evidently been concealed there Jocasta spat out some stand and started to run up the beach towards the cover of the expensive landscaping, her drones zipping along in front of her in a flying V. A man wearing an armored chest plate stepped out from behind a fountain and swung a rifle to bear. One of the drones cut past him, ducking its wings in as it went so that the molecules thin wing membranes cut across his cheeks like flying shrapnel. He yelled and swatted at his face before the blue beam of Jocasta’s pistol removed cut and face in a sizzling blast of energy. Across a manicured lawn she saw a half dozne men burst from the main communications building. One of them was piloting a suit of armor so heavy it might have qualified as a mech, each leg easily as thick as a full grown garamon tree and as wide across the chest as a dumpster. The air split as he fired the machine guns attached to each arm in the air, raining down flaming palm fronds and coconuts.



“Umm…” Jocasta temporised, and then turned and ran back down the beach as fast as her legs could carry her.

Fortune & Glory: Grimdark Pulp RP

“Beren the Cursed,” Jocasta murmured before popping on of the berries into her mouth. Bonnie’s assessment was correct, though they leaned hard towards the tartness that was just a counterpoint in a ripe strawberry.



“Or should it be Beren the Accursed?” she mused, “never quite sure which of those is grammatically correct. Beren didn’t dain to answer that, contenting himself instead by tucking in to the baked potato that had been served on a wooden board, slathered with butter, salt, chives and what was probably the scrapings of the morning’s bacon. The wine was sour and astringent but was no worse than Jocasta had drank elsewhere. She opened her notebook and began to review the inscription she had copied down, crabbing notes into the margins with a small stick of charcoal as she went. It appeared to be part of a saga relating to a young king who sought the aid of an ancient and powerful witch to regain his patrimony from his wicked brothers.

“Jocasta,” Beren said in the tone of someone repeating a name for the third or fourth time. A point that was underscored by the fact that he was snapping his fingers in front of her face.



“Whaa…” she mumbled around a mouthful of berries.

“You have to stop and chew at some point,” he pointed out. Jocasta looked down at her cheeks, crossing her eyes, and noticed they were puffed out like a chipmunks, so absorbed had she been in her study that she had simply been mechanically shoveling them into her mouth. She rubbed her nose, leaving a smut of charcoal on the very tip.

“Wrright,” she mumbled and made several deliberate efforts at chewing before swallowing the mouthful convulsively.

“Sorry,” she apologized, attempting to wipe the charcoal with the back of her hand but succeeding only in spreading the mark across her face. Several of the locals were watching them with interest, not all of it welcoming.

“I was asking you if you wanted any more food,” Beren segued neatly. Jocasta hadn’t touched her potato as yet so she picked it up and took several bites, remembering to chew this time. It was a little dry and stringy, but wonderfully filling. The innkeeper, a portly man in a greasy smock ambled up to the table with a pitcher of wine in his hand.

“Begging your pardons patrons, but would you be requiring lodging?” he asked uneasily, his eyes darting down to Jocasta’s book.

“And if I might suggest madam, you should put that away, folk round her don’t hold much with people messing with the fairy marks,” he whispered in a sotto voce that probably carried across half the tavern.



“Fairy marks?” Jocasta asked, perplexed, momentarily unable to connect the colloquial term with the ancient writing she was deciphering.

“These aren’t fairy marks. I found them in a t….” she cut off with a squawk as Beren slapped a hand over her mouth to prevent her from admitting to desecrating a tomb in front of a room full of superstitious villagers.

“Point taken, and if you have a room we will take it,” he said quickly, using his free hand to flip the book closed with a thump.

Fortune & Glory: Grimdark Pulp RP

"You get the feeling," Jocasta asked as they passed through the street, ignoring the drifting flakes of snow, "that something bad is going on here?" The black tabarded mercenaries were clearly going out of their way to be seen. Two more of them stood outside a two story stone building with a roof of patchy tile, abrided by wind and weather to show the tar beneath. One man leaned on a halberd, the other was packing a pipe with tobacco that he lit with a taper from a shuttered lantern. Both gave Jocasta a speculative look and regarded Beren with more professional interest. The interior of the Crimison Wyrven was a bustling riot of noise and movement. A bard stood on a table before a fire place, strutting black and forth and belting out what might have been part of the Ballad of Black Cally, his long poulin shoes tipped with bells that the shook to questionable musical accompanyment. A group of sellswords were engaged in what might have been a knife fight or a card game depending on ones point of view, with curses and blows flying in a half dozen different tongues. A pair of farmers were locked in a chess game in the corner, their mastiffs so similar they might have come from the same litter. The bar was a single slab of polished wood with a large redish inclusion in the middle that closely resembled a dragon with its wings coiled around its body. Despite the fact that every nearby surfaces was piled with bottles, barrels and baskets of food and drink, not a single item was sat on the bar.

"Nice place," Jocasta commented in a determined neutral tone.

"I've been in worse," Beren replied.

"Like vountarily?" Jocasta quiered.

"What can I do you for," asked simply the most stunning woman Jocasta had ever seen, in a voice that sounded like someone was strangling a cat with a violin. The contrast was so violent that Jocasta was momentarily disoriented. The barmaid sighed and planted a fist on either side of her hips with a weary look.

"Happens all the time. I'm Bonnie, what can I do you two for?" she asked. The grating voice made Jocasta's eye twitch invoulntarily.

"Melve sent us?" Jocasta tried. The woman's beatuiful lips scowl grew deeper.

"That old drunk owes me two crowns," she carped.

"Sure," Jocasta agreed, making a placating guesture to word off further comment from the human squeezebox.

"Can we get some wine and food please?" she asked, then clapped Beren on the shoulder, "On my friend here."

Fortune & Glory: Grimdark Pulp RP

"I don't... you know... have any particular place in mind, not yet anyway. One place is more or less as good as another, at least until I get my bearings... or where my bearings would have been a few thousand years ago anyway," Jocasta explained. Beren nodded as though that made total sense. It was incredible to meet a real life dwarf friend, most humans who had close realtionships with the ancient dwarves seemed to inherit some of their laconic nature. She wondered if there were dwarven tomes on the ancient kingdoms. The fact that this barrow was locked behind a dwarf door suggested there might be.

"Iskura is a good place to find artifacts and rumors if nothing else," she continued, "assuming of course we can get out of here without being munched on by the hungry dead."

"You certainly have a gift for looking on the bright side," Beren replied sarcastically. Jocasta hopped up onto a raised slab of stone high enough that she could kick her booted feet and plucked one of the coins she had stolen from her pouch and examined it.

"Blood King Argante," she said, turning the coin so Beren could see the slope jawed profile.

"This coin is about six thousand years old, or course, who knows how long it was around before it ended up in this tomb?" she mused.

"Fascinating stuff, I don't suppose you have an idea about how to get out of here?" Beren asked. Jocasta looked around the chamber, her eyes following the intricate carvings on the walls. Some phrases she could half understand but it was clearly in some kind of archaic dialects.

"As a matter of fact I do, although it won't be quick."

Jocasta moved around the chamber clockwise while Beren went wittershins, each of them carried one of Jocasta's notebooks and a stick of charcoal, merticulously copying the inscriptions onto the pages of precious vellum. Jocasta muttered about the virtues of papyrii as she worked, but she hadn't exactly been given time to prepare for her expdition before fleeing Andred one step ahead of a long list of angry creditors.

"Did you hear that?" Beren asked, pausing to glance up one of the passageways from which a faint clicking sound was now audible. It was eerily reminiscent of bone rattling on bone.

"We are out of time," Jocasta declared as the sound began to grow louder. She stuffed her book into her pouch and went to the center of the room. She pulled a stick of white charcoal from her pouch and began to scratch a circle of sigils on the ancient flagstone.

"What do you want me to do with the book?" Beren asked as Jocasta sat cross legged in an expanding circle of sigils. She looked up at him in apparent confusion.

"Just put it in your pack or whatever," she instructed. It was Beren's turn to look confused.

"Don't you need it for whatever spell you are working?" he inquired, casting a wary look towards the tunnel from which the clacking of bones and the rattle of rusty weapons was growing louder. Jocasta shook her head.

"It's just for my research," she told him absently. Beren stared at her in amazement.

"YOu mean you had me spend six hours copying down inscriptions rather that trying to escape?!" he demanded.

"Well, it would be irresponsible otherwise," Jocasta replied defensively. She paused and observed her work, absently sticking her tongue out of the corner of her mouth as as made a few last minute modifications. The marching tread of skeletal feet was joined by a foetid stench of the grave. Beren hefted his axe and stepped into position between Jocasta and the passageway. She stood up and began to chant, raising both hands above her head.

"Whatever you are doing you had better..." Beren began. As he spoke a phalanx of walking corpses errupted from the tunnel, wicked spears and rust billhooks brandished. Jocasta's voice grew panicked but her chant didn't waver even as Beren leaped forward and clove one of the archaic corpses in half, scattering bones and rotting cloth in all directions before being forced back in a series of desperate parries.

"I think we should..." he began to shout but he was drowned out as Jocasta shrieked the last word of her spell. The sigils light with green white light and leaped up into the celiing, vanishing rather anti-climactically. Beren cast a wild eyed look over his shoulder.

"That's it?!" he shouted, batting away an axe blade and breaking the jaw of one of the creatures in a spray of teeth.

"Well..." Jocasta began and then the roof exploded. Dust and stone blocks flew in all directions, shattering statues and crushing several of the draughr in the process. The survivors surged around their fallen foes, taking advantage of Beren's shock to exit the mouth of the tunnel and begin to encircle the warrior. Thick white roots, each the thickness of a man's trunk stabbed downwards out of the ongoing landslide like the fingers of a giant, each one driving a corpse into the ground in a spray of bone fragments. Before either Beren or Jocasta could do more than gawp the roots pulled tight around them and yanked them up into the crumbling ceiling, squishing them together as they were ripped upwards through the heart of the mountain. Rock and soil ground past outside the protective cocoon, half falling and half being pulled through the debris.

"Isthisagoodthing?!" Beren mubmled, his face squeezed tight against Jocasta's left breast in their undignified sprawl.

"Sort of!" Jocasta shouted. The spell had been cast, but it was well beyond her control at this point. Working magic within the magical echo chamber of the tomb had been a risky move, allowing her to tap into far more power than she had any hope of controling. With a shocking suddeness they burst into bright sunlight, the roots around them opening like a child tossing a ball. Jocasta tumbled end over end, clinging to Beren as they cartwheeled thought the air for long moments before she landed on top of her erstwhile partner a moment after he hit the snow cover. They slid down the snow in a heap as stones fell around them like rain, the rumble of the destruction behind them only growing. They hit a snow bank against a fallen elm tree with a crunch that shook a hundred pounds of snow from nearby trees. Jocasta pushed herself to her feet, spitting out snow. By chance she was facing towards the hill they had just tumbled down. The great tree at its crest was attempting to shove its roots back down into the hill, but the damage had been done. Snow and stone were slumping down the hill and gathering speed, developing into a full fledged avalance.

"Definitely coming down on the side of 'mixed blessing'," Jocasta said, making quotation marks with her fingers as the ruin of the hill and the barrow raced down on them like an unstopable tide.

Fortune & Glory: Grimdark Pulp RP

Jocasta cleared her throat with embarssment. The idea of studying ancient magics seemed alot less problematic when one wasn't trapped in an ancient web of necromantic spells. It had to be admitted though, that despite their predicament, she was fascinated by the crumbling stonework around them. Her eyes tried to memorize every frieze and inscription she passed.

"I studied," she admitted carefully, "at the College of Magic in Andred." It was a crime to suggest you were a student at the Mythrim if you weren't offically on the student roles. Students had ancient rights included in the university charter, immunity from civil prosecution, immunity from pole tax, liscence to possess certain illicit texts and artifacts which would have been illegal for the lay man. Such rights were valuable enough that interlopes often pretended, and usually to their peril as none were more zealous in rooting out imposters than the College Provosts. Jocasta had endured her shares of run ins with them herself, though she was cunning enough and lucky enough to avoid being caught in her occasional lapses.

"They have some tomes on the history of the North. Vague rumors really of the Pale King and his seven Lost Knights. Stories about the Tower of a Thousand Teeth, the Circle of Twelve, the Pillars of Can Berath," she explained, her voice taking on the dreamy quality that it always did when recounting the old tales.

"The more I looked into it though the more I discovered that they didn't really know anything beyond folk tales. Even the magic they used up here is all but unknown. I found bits and pieces in ancient tomes and a surprising amount in the confessions of various hedgewitches but its pretty clear that no one has ever really studied it," she went on.

"I thought I'd be the first, who knows, maybe make my name and my fortune while I'm at it," she added with a giggle.

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