Penny

Fortune & Glory: Grimdark Pulp RP

Jocasta felt momentarily crestfallen when Beren described them as ‘just traveling companions’. Fortunately she was standing behind Beren when he said it and his attention was focused solely on the dwarves. Well it wasn’t that big a deal, she had known him for less than a week after all. The demonic tattoo on her midriff seemed to throb slightly in mockery that Jocasta did not appreciate. Before she had too much time to dwell on it the conversation turned in an unexpected direction.

“There is a library here?” she interjected suddenly. The dwarves stared at her in surprise, apparently deeply sunk in their quest to locate this lost hold of theirs. Jocasta juggled the references to dwarves in her mind, quickly setting the date of any major dwarven presence to several hundred years ago.

“Well aye,” the leader of the dwarves agreed, “maybe not what you would call a library. A hundred and some odd years ago there was a would be despot who conquered Iskura and the surrounding area. Man named Cumberbean if you can believe it. Anyway he was from the south and had some odd ideas. Fancied himself an intellectual. He forced all the noble families and all the temples to give up their books. Piled them all up in what today they call ‘The Library’ though we gather it was a temple to some old god before that.” The dwarf made a gesture with his chin, indicating a large stone building that loomed up on the hill that formed the center of the town.

“Most of its trash, some of it we can’t read, but three ages of men must have seen something,” he sniffed in a tone that clearly despaired of humans ever amounting to anything. Jocasta neglected to point out that a race that had gone through an ‘Age of Reckoning’ probably shouldn’t be throwing any expertly shaped stones.

“Well it sounds like we might be able to help you, I know a thing or two about libraries,” Jocasta told the dwarves. Dubious would have been a charitable description of the looks they shot her.

“Hey what are these?” Jocasta asked, suddenly distracted by a pile of paper wrapped tubes in the corner of the smithy. She picked up a lantern and leaned closer to take a look.

“NOO!” the shout was general. Every dwarf jumped at her at once. One caught her across the chest and knocked her sprawling, spilling the lantern from her hand. She crashed into a pile of neatly stacked firewood, sending timber in all directions. The lantern tumbled towards the ground in slow motion. Beren kicked out at the last second, getting a toe under the lantern and kicking it upwards, catching it neatly. Jocasta sat up among the firewood she had been driven into by the crash tackling dwarves.

“Fireworks,” the head dwarf said with a scowl, brushing splinters of timber from her coat. “For the founders day celebration tomorrow.”

Penny's Pencils

Penny's Pencils

Penny's Pencils

In The Guard Now (Warhammer 40K)

That explains the :

3) Itches.

@BangoSkank

In The Guard Now (Warhammer 40K)

Maybe you're doing rails with some hookers.

I've a wee twist or two in mind.

@BangoSkank

Given warhammer slang, this could imply small mutant hookers.

Fortune & Glory: Grimdark Pulp RP

Jocasta shifted uncomfortably as a half dozen dwarves bustled out of the shopfront. Most were stripped to the waist wearing leather breeches and barring the many slight discolorations that came with a life of minor burns in a smithy. Though one of them wore a short jerkin of polished leather. All of them were armed though it seemed habitual rather than in response to being called out front. Several of them had quite impressive tattoos in striking geometric designs though whether this was art or script Jocasta didn’t know. There were very few extant examples of dwarf writing, mostly from inscriptions on old monuments and while certain mages certainly possessed some knowledge of the language they kept it to themselves.



A traveler stepped in through the door and froze when he found himself confronted by a crowd of obviously excited, if not necessarily hostile, dwarves. He held up both palms and stepped out of the store and hurried off.



“They aren’t going to try to kill us are they?” Jocasta asked, “I’m just saying that would make five different species that have tried to kill me today.” Beren looked back over his shoulder.



“Five?” he asked in surprise.



“Humans, troll, giant spider, dark elf, demon…” she trailed off.



“You’re right, dwarves would make six,” she corrected apologetically.

The Enemy Beyond: Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor RP

We didn't need any sophisticated method to find our way to where Bahometus and the coven were at work. There was a wailing psychic wrongness in the air that screamed their location. Even the troopers, bereft of any mental gifts, could feel it, the hair on their necks prickling and standing on end. We passed more bodies as we advanced deeper into the xenos lair. Many were the metal men we had seen, their chrome bodies hacked and mutilated almost beyond recognition. The bodies of our own men were worse. We found them in ones and twos, their entrails ripped from their chests and strung around the walls like bunting, blood spattered everywhere. I was trying very hard to come up with a suggestion that we ought to pull back and let the navy sterilize the site from orbit, but I couldn’t find a way to do so that wouldn't make it sound like I thought running away was the right choice. Abruptly, the corridor opened into a vast plaza. The place must have been a mile square, completely composed of black stone veined with the unwholesome xenos green. A large pyramid stood in the center, surmounted by a spinning point of sickly purple light. The pyramid had protrusions like skeletal arms that emitted an arcing greenish discharge around the light, as though containing or conjuring it. There were a dozen or more smaller pyramids surrounding the first, their points glowed green, and periodically bolts of green lightning snapped between the smaller and the larger structure. The air was ionized beyond belief, though not quite enough to block out the filthy stink of the warp that permeated the place. Great obelisks of silvery metal erupted from the ground around the central pyramids, rising nearly to the ceiling before sinking away again to no rhythm I could determine. Xenos glyphs glowed on their surfaces in green. Some remained up for minutes, others only a few seconds, before sinking into the floor leaving no sign they had ever been there. I felt stark terror at the sight. Who knew what this place had been designed for. We were like ants who were toying with the controls to a battle tighten in hopes it might flatten a few other ants.



“We have to reach the central pyramid,” Hadrian declared, as though that were simply a matter of marching over there.



“Commander,” Lucius said in a voice that was probably conversational for him but registered as a shout to the rest of us. We followed his out stretched bronze finger and saw dark red figures running towards us. There was no mistaking them as human. Each had six spindly arms tipped with razor sharp talons, the top two arms held swords that looked to be made of black and red stone that thrummed with malevolent energy. Their faces were beyond horrible, vaguely equine and eyeless save for where brass studs marked with hideous eye searing glyphs had been hammered.



“Throne preserve us,” one of the guardsmen muttered. I tried to share the sentiment but felt a welling of despair as I remembered Lucius’ mental images of the Emperor as a man, a great general to be sure, but just a man. There were a dozen of them, yipping and calling in what might have been language but what I preferred to think of as simple animal noises. Suddenly an obelisk erupted beneath the feet of the demon pack, throwing the bulk of them two hundred feet into the air. Daemonic they might have been, but they cracked like eggs when they hit the ground, oozing an oldly luminescent smoke. A pair that had been by the edge of the pack had merely been knocked off their feet. They scuttled forward like spiders, regaining their footing as they came.



“For the Emperor!” Hadrian shouted and the troopers opened fire. Laz bolts ripped through the air, their energy leaving lingering purple tracks in the ionized air. The lead daemon shuddered like a man hunching against the snow, las bolts blasting smoldering craters in its carapace. The second one, seemed to race past the first, like a drafting swan. It leaped into the air thirty feet from us both blades and four sets of talons raised to strike. I knew I was going to die. It was a certainty. If not from these two daemons then from the other packs I could already see heading towards us on sparking claws. An icy feeling settled into my stomach. Without really thinking about it, I lifted the force staff and pointed it at the leaping horror. My will exploded through the psycho-conductive alloy. This was no unfocused panicked strike like the one I had employed while escaping the ball. It was a hard lance of pure will, just like Hadrian had taught me. It caught the Daemon in mid air. The thing might have been inhumanly fast, it might have been impossibly strong, but so long as it wasn’t touching the ground, it was simply an object in motion. The blast caught it in the thorax and hammered it back like a juvie hitting a hive ball. It shrieked in rage for a brief moment before it hit the obelisk which had so fortuitously dispatched its companion. It wasn’t a clean strike, it hit the trapezoidal edge of the structure and flew off at an angle, its back shattered and trailing glowing warp smoke. Its companion continued to stagger forward, but the death of one of the things seemed to have lifted the fog of panic from our troopers. The panicked fire became accurate and placed, the whole front of the daemon glowed like metal that had been overheated. The thunder warrior stepped into the hail of las fire as though it wasn’t their and drove a great fist into the things glowing chest. It burst apart in a spray of ichor.



“Forward!” Hadrian screamed and strode towards the pyramid weapons raised.

Fortune & Glory: Grimdark Pulp RP

Jocasta sat up suddenly as she realized Beren was awake. Her hand unconsciously drifted to her stomach and she yanked them away guiltily. Once she had reached Iskura she had gone directly to the Mayor to deliver the letter. That worthy had been grateful for word from his southern counterpart, grateful enough to pay them, allow them to stay in his manor and to send for a physician. The doctor, an unbelievably ancient man with thick horn rimmed glasses had examined Beren for nearly a half an hour, poking and prodding at him without finding any fault beyond ‘exhaustion’. Exhaustion he told her, could be easily cured with bed rest and a bland diet, and was beneath the notice of so esteemed a personage as himself. With Beren in bed Jocasta had retired to clean herself up. It was only then that she had found it. The glyph appeared like a tattoo circling her belly button and dropping down over both hips in a series of sinuous lines and arcane symbols. She hadn’t had time to decode it as yet, but its meaning was plain. She was bound to the demonic entity that she had accidently summoned. It had power over her and could reach into the world through her. It might even have its claws in her soul. The thought made her shiver. Nothing she had ever heard about bargains with demons ended with ‘and then she lived happily ever after.’ Perhaps if she had been brave like Beren, or smart enough to flee before the thing attacked, things might be different.



“We… we managed to get away,” Jocasta told him, somewhat unnecessarily. “I was able to use the sarong to get us out of there, even though I admit it was a bit of a longshot.” None of that was technically untrue, though she felt a knot form in the pit of her stomach as she said it.

“Your wounds weren’t as bad as they seemed, I was able to use a healing charm to fix the worst of it, and the mayor was kind enough to provide us with a doctor, he gave you a potion which took care of the rest,” she told him. The potion had been a simple tonic and about as magical as a shovelful of dirt, but there seemed no reason to stress that at this juncture.

“He says you will be ok, so long as you rest,” she finished in a rush.

The Hyborian Chronicles: Of Sword and Sorcery

The sorceress trembled visibly as the door ground open. Beyond the portal was a large chamber that all but dripped with greenery. Its human origins were clear, in the center stood a column carved with strange mythological scenes which showed men in archaic armor speaking with strange creatures with many arms. In early panels they traded and exchanged knowledge, but as the column rose the panels became increasingly violent. Bas-relief axes split strange heads, and many armed figures used odd wavy knives to strike down their opponents. A stair wound four times around the tapering monolith before reaching its point, from which shone a jewel of clear silver moonlight. If the frieze told a coherent story, it was lost in the odd vegetation that obscured nearly every inch of stonework. Pale green moss grew on the column, across the floor of the chamber grew trees with soft purple leaves with opalescent bark. Fruits hung from their branches, deep black but oily looking and reflective. The soft buzz of unfamiliar insects polluted the night. The trees grew so thickly and the ropey intestine like vines which linked them hung in such profusion, that the walls of the chamber were all but invisible, save for the arabesque windows through which the light of the nearly full moon shone. Around these stone wrought openings the vegetation glowed with more than moonlight, seeming to pulse and throb with an internal phosphorescence which faded a few feet beyond the reach of the light.



“What magic is this,” Amal breathed as he stepped across the threshold. Sythemis stood frozen beneath the door arch, her mouth slightly agog. The first sign of true shock she had thus far shown.

“Come on woman, it was you who told me we must hurry,” Amal hissed. His words seemed to snap her back to reality and she stepped through in his wake, her face filled with an eager hunger that any man would die to see on the face of a courtesan. They moved across the moss, brushing passed the strange foliage. Each touch seemed to puff perfume into the air, an odd scent like cinnamon on the verge of burning, or the desert before a storm.



It came out of the trees without so much as a whisper of air to precede it. A vast black shape that arched through the air in eerie silence. It struck Sythemis and sent her crashing into the undergrowth with a flash of claws and a spray of blood. It landed and rounded on Amal, quick as a serpent. It was a vast black catlike beast, with membraneous flesh stretched between its forepaws and its mid section. Its face was a mass of scar tissue where six eyes had been gouged or burned with hot irons. Its four nostrils projected far forward like the snout of a vole and then quivered and flexed with fine hairs. Blind it might be, but it could clearly sense its surroundings by more than natural means. The thing was the size of a small bear for all the lethal stealth with which it moved. Blood dripped from its forepaws as it opened its mouth, revealing four rows of needle sharp teeth, none of which quite aligned with the others. Letting out a soundless roar that Amal felt in his stomach, it launched itself towards the thief, its jaw hyperextending.