Penny

Penny's Pencils

Gold & Glory: AU thread

"Are you really still messing about with that Elgi trash?" Morek grumbled as Emmaline finished lacing up the bluish hide armor. Markus had been correct in his assumption that no elf would have anything close to her bust, nor her hips, and she had been forced to cut the garment down the front and lace it up over a section of cape. The end result didn't look particularly elven at close range but she could hope that from afar it might not be immediately apparent.

"Well its that or dress up as a slave I guess," Emmaline replied a trifle tartly. The pair of them were at the prow where Morek had just finished reloading the repeating bolt thrower, or as he called it, that piece of elgi trash. Come to think of it Elgi trash seemed to be a fairly common adjective with him. The dwaf was hefting a pair of sea axes meant for cutting lines in an emergency. In his hands the ornate weapons seemed almost prissy, but Emmaline didn't doubt they would prove effective. Markus and the two elves were busy at the sails. Despite their words, Emmaline suspected it was only the fact that she and the dwarf would side with Markus that kept them from knifing thier rescuers and heading for Ulthan.

"Speaking of appearing like a slave," Emmaline said and crossed over to the dwarf. Morek backed a step at her approach.

"Stop that, you are as skittish as an elf," she snapped. Predictabley this froze the dwarf in place as his rage percolated. Emmaline put a hand on either side of his collar.

"Dwalarek kestor pharidas," she whispered and pulled the collar free, the metal momentarily as pliable as cool spring water. The spell faded and Emmaline dropped the collar with a crash, its considerable weight restored when the spell had run its course. The dwarf glared at her for a minute but then seemed to relax.

"My thanks Manlette," he grumbled.

Gold & Glory: AU thread

“Ranald’s balls,” Emmaline goggled as she came down from the deck to find the slaughter in the hold. “They butchered these poor people rather than let them free…”

Neither Markus, the elves, nor the few surviving prisoners bothered to contradict her mistaken assumption. Blood oozed from the wounds, though it didn’t flow as freely as it might have had the wounds not been partially cauterized by fire. Emmaline had covered her naked chest by the simple expedient of taking a second cloak and wrapping it around her front, binding the two garments in place with a short length of rope. There was a slight jingling as she moved. A cynical person might have thought she had looted the fallen elves of any coins they carried and tucked them down her improvised tunic.

“Can we set sail, they might come back at any moment,” Emmaline fretted as Markus pushed past her. The high elves tried to follow suit, but Emmaline, in no mood to be pushed around, pivoted and blocked them. One of the elves bounced off her rump as she turned and followed Markus up the narrow companion way.

“We are aground,” Markus told her in a tone that suggested he was working to suppress a ‘you idiot’ at the end of the sentence.

“The dark ones will have laid a sea anchor,” one of the elves called past Emmaline.

“In case one of our vessels chanced upon them if nothing else. We might be able to use it to haul ourselves off,” the elf explained. As the reached the deck Emmaline saw that he was right. A dark hauser of rope ran from a capstan at the rear, sinking down to vanish into the water.

“Do you think they will return before high tide?” Emmaline asked. One of the elves shrugged.

“It depends on whether they have done with their sport,” he told her, noble face twisting with distaste. Markus scowled and stared out to see, licking his lips as he tasted the wind.

“Probably three or four more hours before the tide is in enough to float us,” Makrus declared.

“Do you think the three of you can drag us into the water?” Emmaline asked.

“Put your backs into it!” Emmaline encouraged as she sat on the railing, eating an apple she had found in one of the holds. Markus and the pair of elves paused to glare at her, though none of them suggested that she help. With a silent will they braced themselves against the capstan bars and heaved. The ship groaned and then shifted another six inches, scrapping the gravel beach as the keel slid and then bit again.

“Well don’t stop once you have momentum on your side,” Emmaline chastised as she chewed the delicious flesh of the fruit. Evil degenerates they might be, but the Dark Elves certainly ate well while at sea. The sweating males paused and one of the elves, Indrin he said his name was, muttered something in his own language that made the other elf laugh.

“The tide will be at the hull in another twenty minutes,” Markus said, resting his forearms on his bar. The remaining slaves had remained in their hold, unwilling to join the attempted escape no matter what threats Emmaline had leveled at them. It wasn’t, she thought, that they didn’t believe her, just that they were far more scared of what the Dark Elves would do when they took back the ship. Emmaline gave serious thought to at least driving them into the forest so that they didn’t weigh the ship down, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to send them to certain death in such a fashion.

“Perhaps we can… Asuryan burn them,” Idrin cursed and he bared his teeth. A dozen dark elves were emerging from the forest edge, laughing as they drove a pair of raggedly dressed slaves ahead of them with whips of what looked like thorny vines. Two more elves led a dwarf by a catchpole that was fastened around his neck. Emmaline hopped down, placing timber between herself and the approaching elves.

“If we can hold them off for twenty minutes…” Markus began. One of the Dark Elves shouted something to the ship in his own language. Perhaps wondering where the sentries were. Emmaline walked down the deck, crossing over to put more distance between her and the approaching foes. Idrin shouted something back at them. All the elves stopped, the slaves forgotten. One of the dark elves shouted in alarm and a moment later crossbow quarrels were thumping into the hull. Emmaline squeaked and ran the last few feet to the large bolt thrower. She hauled it round to face towards the elves who were already rushing towards the ship. One of them shouted in alarm and threw himself flat. Emmaline pulled the lever and the strange device spat out a half dozen bolts one of the elves dropped, a quarrel in his neck, another fell cursing with a shattered leg. To Emmaline’s amazement the dwarf grabbed the catchpole and broke it in half, tugging the startled elf off his feet. He grabbed the splintered end and drove it twice into the downed elf’s face. The first blow shattered the creatures proud nose, the second punched the thin bone at the back of its eyesocket into its brain. The dwarf roared at the other two bloodied slaves but both were cowering prostrate on the ground.

“Run!” Emmaline shouted, though the Dwarf needed no encouragement, he raced across the beach at a lumbering trot, as fast as his stout legs could carry him. One of the dark elves lifted his cross bow to slay the escaping dwarf but Emmaline bleated a word and thick choking smoke blossomed around the would be marksman. A bolt flew from the oily mess, tore a gash in the dwarfs shoulder and vanished into the sea. Markus stood up and fired his own captured crossbow, though if he struck anything Emmaline didn’t see it. The dwarf pounded up the plank then turned and kicked it away.

“The capstan!” Emmaline shouted, making a wild gesture with her free hand. A quarrel slammed into the bolt thrower a few inches from her hand and she yelped and threw herself to the deck. The dwarf took hold of the capstan and heaved. He was nearly as broad as Markus was tall and his muscles were immense. The corded up and bunched as he heaved. With a titanic scraping sound the hull began to drag across the gravel. Markus and the two elves jumped to their own bars and added their strength and a moment later Emmaline felt the water beneath them as the were afloat. The ship began to pick up speed as it moved towards its anchor.

“Cut the line, get that lateen around!” Markus was shouting. Fortunately both elves seemed to know something of sailing. Emmaline pulled her knife free and cut the line to the anchor in three quick strikes. The lateen sail slapped in the wind for a moment before the elves hauled the boom into place and it billowed out, beginning to drive them out to sea. Markus had made it to the tiller where he crouched down for cover against the crossbow bolts and elven curses that were hurled at his departing back. Indrin’s friend, whose name Emmaline hadn’t caught, took a step towards the dwarf. A fist the size of a ham caught the elf across the jaw and dropped him to the deck.

“These are friendly elves,” Emmaline shouted in alarm. The dwarf spit a gobbet of phlem and blood into the ocean.

“Nay soouch thing lass,” he glowered, glaring at Idrin who was keeping a safe distance.

Fortune & Glory: Grimdark Pulp RP

Jocasta laughed and quickly covered her mouth with her hands. She had to admit that in his current state Beren looked like he had robbed several graves or was taking part in a poorly funded theatrical production about people who robbed graves. She crossed over to him in her own resplendent gown and began to stroke the front of his frock coat as though smoothing it, running her hands down over his chest.

“My clothes aren’t any better than yours,” she told him, despite the fact this was manifestly untrue. She moved around behind him and brushed dust from his pants, sneezing violently as she did so.



“All things, contain the seed of what they once were,” she told him as she ran her hands over his belt.

“Wha…” Beren asked, obviously taken aback by her strange behavior. Jocasta gently turned Beren to face mirror against the far wall. It was a lousy mirror and probably hadn’t been much better before it had been pulled from the house fire that had charred its frame and heated a long crack in the lower half of it, but it did the job. The clothing now looked brand new. The coat was no longer threadbare and shabby. Instead, gold thread had been woven through the taupe linen to give it a soft shimmer and the scuffed brass buttons shone as though freshly buffed. The cracks in the leather belt had vanished to be replaced with a soft sheen as though it had come directly from the tailor. The trousers and the button down too seamed brand new, the stains and tears of a lifetime of use erased.

“What did you do?” Beren asked, though that must have been obvious.

“You know that old story about the girl who goes to the ball with magic clothes and has to leave by midnight?” Jocasta asked. Beren nodded, it was a common enough child’s tale, though why the would be princess just didn’t tell the prince her name escaped Jocasta completely.

“I did that,” she told him, with an aura of smug satisfaction.

“So I’m going to turn back into a rag picker at midnight?” he queried. Jocasta put on a hurt expression.

“Of course not, I’m much better at this than that fairy witch or whatever.”

Gold & Glory: AU thread

While Markus might pass for an elf from a distance Emmaline was less sanguine about her own chances. She was shorter and far shapelier than any elf she had ever encountered back in Altdorf. Not that the snooty bastards had given anyone much of a time of day. Her best chance, she thought, was to stay far away and try to keep Markus between her and any potential trouble, which, come to think of it, was always pretty good advice. One of the elves had a small but ingenious crossbow in his possession, no bigger than a pistol, though wider where the arms spread in an odd vertical arrangement. Emmaline, rightly skeptical of her chances with a blade, took the small weapon and fired a bolt into the dirt so she could practice reloading. The tossed the bodies into the hollow beneath the tree and covered the remainder of the fire, the carcass of the dear, and the unlamented Druchii, with leaf liter.



Fortunately Markus assertion that he could track the elves seemed to be true. Emmaline wondered where he had learned the skill. Markus didn’t speak much about his past, and usually found more productive uses for their time together than idle conversation. She knew he had been in the Imperial Navy before he turned pirate and she thought she had heard hints to the fact that he was some nobleman’s bastard, though what part of the Empire he might be from was a mystery. Even his accent, corrupted by too much time among sailors, was difficult to place. The walked for perhaps an hour through the forest. Here and there an orange fungus of some sort climbed from the ground to encrust the bark of the occasional tree. Small stream beds cut the landscape here and there, often filled with fallen timbers and knife bladed ferns where the banks had undercut existing growths.

“Why aren’t they following the stream beds, surely it would be easier going,” Emmaline panted. The Druchii’s long boots were far more comfortable than the shoes she had left behind. They might even be stylish if she could find something that would go with the odd bluish hide they seemed to be made out of. Not everything elvish was magic, but the craftsmanship of those ethereal beings seemed to imbue their artifacts with something very close. Breathless as she was from the unexpected exercise, Emmaline still felt like she was doing better than she had any right to.



“See how the dirt is scraped back to the rock,” Markus said, pointing with is sword to where large lumps of shale protruded through the bank of a stream.

“Flash floods I’d say, the look of those clouds, there could be sudden downpours at any second,” he told her. Emmaline looked skeptically at the clouds but knew better than to doubt Markus when it came to judging the weather.

“Also, I think they know better than to be predictable,” Markus said, his voice suddenly grim. Emmaline gasped when she saw what he was looking at. A human body, naked save for rags, had been tossed onto one of the bladed ferns. Judging by the blood staining the leaves, the human had been alive at the time, though also by the blood, not for long after that. A pair of crossbow bolts were through the corpses knees, evidently shot from behind.



“What in Shyalla’s holy cunt is going on?” Emmaline asked. Markus turned and headed along the top of the bank, pacing like a panther as he examined the scene.



“There were more of them, probably a score,” Markus said, squatting down to examine some scuff marks on the bank. “After they killed this guy they headed inland.”



“Well I think our friend here would agree that a score of elves is a good thing to avoid,” Emmaline pointed out, nodding with her chin towards the partially dismembered body.



“Right,” Markus agreed and lead the way east in the direction the party had come from.





“It’s a ship,” Markus said as he slithered down the small rocky hill to where Emmaline waited, the elven cloak wrapped tightly against the sea breeze. The forest had grown thinner and the streams began to run as they had gotten closer to the ocean. The salt water blowing in seemed to disagree with all but hardy grasses and stringy lantana vines. She had begun to doubt whether Markus’ tracking was as good as he seemed to think, but this seemed to be vindication. She wriggled up the hill. Markus put one hand on each of her buttocks and shoved to give her a boost, lifting her head above the central spine of the outcropping. The headland they were on formed one arm of a small bay with a gravelly beach. In the center of the beach, where one of the streams flowed out into the ocean, stood a small ship. It was clearly a Dark Elven vessel, low and rakish with what seemed to Emmaline an improbable number of sharp edges. It had been grounded on the beach, hauled far enough up that it canted slightly to one side, a long rope bound it to a massive tree that defied the salt and projected out of the bank of the creek, drinking in the watery sunlight. Only three elves were in view, dressed in garb similar to that Markus and Emmaline had stripped from their victims. Two of them stood by a long plank that ran from the ship to the beach, a third stood a complicated looking device on what she thought of as the fo’castle but probably had another maritime name which Markus would delight in correcting her on if she tried to use it. A trio of humans were also visible, lashed to a grating amid ships.



“Looks like they landed here and most of the crew went off to … what?” Emmaline pondered as she clambered back down into concealment.



“If there is a city near here, they might have been hunting down escaped slaves,” Markus said. “Big group goes inland, runs into them. Kills some and captures others. The rest scatter.” It was a good theory, it certainly explained why only two of the ships company had come across Emmaline and Markus.



“So what do we do?” she asked. Markus grinned at her.

“For once I have a plan that can utilize all of your assets.”





Emmaline sobbed as she was marched across the beach towards the Druchii raider. Her feet, once again bootless, scrapped on the gravel, making her hop and stagger gingerly. The wind cut at her body, now naked from the waist up completing her misery. All three elves on the ship turned to watch, though they relaxed quickly as they made out a figure in elven armor behind the prisoner. The elf by the bolt thrower turned his weapon back out to sea, though his eyes remained on the prisoner.



“Please, I cant go back!” Emmaline whined, great crocodile tears rolling down her face. They were perhaps thirty feet from the nearest elf when he called something out in his own language.

“Please!” Emmaline shrieked, “Sigmar help me!” The shouting precluded any chance of her captor being able to communicate with the elf, at least for a few seconds.

“Silence wretch, why are you naked,” the nearest elf sneered in accented Riekspiel. Markus, who until that moment had been mostly concealed behind his ‘captive’ stepped passed her.



“Hey, don’t knock it till you’ve tried it,” the pirate told the elf, and then shot him through the bridge of the nose with the handbow. The elf staggered backwards in shock and then collapsed to the beach in a heap. The second elf was already moving. He leaped at Markus like liquid metal, a cruel blade clearing its scabbard without so much as a whisper. Markus hurled the empty weapon into the elf’s face. The Druchii dogged it effortlessly, the look of contempt still curling his lips as Markus’ sword came around in a windmilling cut that separated head from shoulders in a spray of blood. The third elf abandoned the heavy bolt thrower for a repeating crossbow, lifting the weapon to spit the two humans where they stood. Golden light flashed and the crossbow was suddenly twisting like a living thing. The elf screamed a curse and threw the weapon away. It turned a half circle and went off, a quarrel suddenly projecting from his hip. The elf went down with a scream as the impact drove the bolt deeper. He crawled three feet across the deck and tried to grab at a spear that was racked along one gunwale. Markus’ boot caught him square in the face and he went limp. There was sudden silence save for the whimpering of the shocked human slaves and the gentle lapping of the gray ocean.

“A pirates life for me,” Markus grinned.

Fortune & Glory: Grimdark Pulp RP

Jocasta snickered to see the normally confident Beren so adrift. She set the letter down and pulled her broken archeoscope from her pouch. The cracked green lens glared angrily at her, reflecting a dozen distorted versions of her own face at her. Reaching into her pouch she withdrew a fine cloth wrapped around a small bottle with a cork stopper. Pulling the cork she dabbed several drops of the bottles purple viscous contents onto the rag and then began to scrub the broken lens furiously. The hairs on Beren’s arms rose and there was a soft crackle of energy that smelled vaguely of crushed stink bugs. When Jocasta lifted the cloth the lens was whole one more, green and gleaming. She held both halves of the broken glasses together and sighed.



“I wonder if they have any brass, one of the candlesticks in the front hall looked like…” Jocasta mused. Beren snapped his fingers in front of her face.

“The party, remember, a little focus?” he cajoled. Jocasta made an indelicate sound and set the two halves of the broken instrument down on her bedside table, thought the better of it and tucked it into one of her pouches. You never knew when you might have to flee without time to recover your archeoscope after all.



“Right, well you will have to risk it as far as dancing goes,” she advised, “As for clothes…” So far as she knew neither of them owned even a change of clothes. Well she owned a sarong, but she doubted that freezing her tits off in such a tropical garment was likely to make a good impression. That left only one option.





The cost of new clothing was astronomical. Everyone in Iskura, nobles and peasants alike, was outfitting themselves for the following day’s celebration. A remote city like Iskura couldn’t be expected to produce its own cloth, with wool and linen coming from far to the south, and silk further still. Jocasta wasn’t willing to waste most of their small stash of coin on new clothing, but fortunately this wasn’t the first time she had been poor and needed outfitting.



“You really think we will find something in a place like this?” Beren asked as they stepped into a dilapidated shock in a decidedly seedy looking alley. The place was the worst kind of pawn shop, probably nothing more than a fence, and by the filthy state of the store, not a very successful one. Rusted swords and spears were stacked in half rotted barrels. The shelves were lined with battered lanterns, old jewelery and various tools.

“Hey they have brass,” Jocasta observed brightly.

“Clothes,” Beren said, drawing the word out to keep Jocasta’s attention focused.



“Oh, right,” she said, leading the way to the back. As she had expected there were racks of clothing there. Like the rest of the store they were in abysmal condition, faded, moth eaten, and all but falling apart. In the case of one bright red jacket, there were visible knife holes.

“Um… I’m all for cost savings,” Beren put in judiciously. Jocasta waved away his objection as she plucked at a yellowed lace dress.



“Just find something that looks like it might have been good once,” she advised as she found a ripped silk bodice in white and green.



“And then what?” Beren asked. Jocasta gave Beren a conspiratorial wink.



An hour later Jocasta emerged from her room in a dress of gleaming white and green silk in a jaunty checkered pattern. The cut plunged rather lower than was the current fashion, bearing more of Jocasta’s bosom than was generally on display. She had a pair of white stockings and white leather slippers with silver stitching that matched a sash that was wrapped around her waist in a series of clever knots. The magical repair she had wrought wouldn’t last forever, but it would last for the next couple of days.

“Come on out and show me!” she called through Beren’s door.

Gold & Glory: AU thread

Emmaline didn’t argue with Markus, though it seemed to her that ‘move away from the psychotic torture elves’ would have been a wiser strategy. She might have been more vocal about the point if she hadn’t seen the points of jagged mountains low on the south. There was no way that they would make it over those mountains, certainly not wet and shivering as they were. The wind off the sea was already cutting, the sailors tunic (creatively tailored) was theoretically water resistant, though water resistant didn’t mean much when you had been literally submerged.



“Cold? Or just happy to see me?” Markus asked with a snort of laughter.

“Wha..” Emmaline began, then looked down and blushed.



They reached the edge of the forest. Mercifully the gnarled trees provided some shelter from the wind. That was the only mercy Emmaline could see. The forest was beyond foreboding. The greyish trees lowered over them, blocking what anemic sunlight there was. There was little enough undergrowth, probably because the jagged bows above did such a good job of blocking the sunlight. Several of the trees were in the process of being strangled by blackish purple vines with impressive and very unhealthy looking thorns. Several trees had died under the treatment, leaving skeletal armatures entirely composed of the climbing vines. Markus stepped forward with his sword, carefully scrapping the points from thorns as they passed through. Greenish sap, which Emmaline didn’t doubt was poisonous, leaked from the wounds. She kept close behind the pirate, careful to avoid scratching herself. It seemed impossible they would make any progress under such conditions, but twenty feet into the forest the thorns vanished. Perhaps the edge of the forest was the most dangerous zone, or perhaps it was some freak of nutrition or sunlight. Idly Emmaline wondered what alchemical properties the thorn sap might have, though her alchemical abilities were only slightly more advanced than her magical ones.



“Let’s keep moving while we have the light,” Markus said, grabbing a handful of off leaves and wiping the sap from his blade. It shone darkly in the half light, unmarred and, Emmaline feared, happy to be home.



Emmaline’s feet were screaming by the time Markus called a halt. Twilight was well and truly settled and it was becoming increasingly difficult to see. Even so Emmaline thought Markus would have continued the march if they hadn’t come across a fallen tree, whose uprooted bowl made a half cave for them to shelter in.



“These roots look pretty dry,” Markus observed, “shame we don’t have an axe.” Emmaline raised her right arm and made a downward slash with her arm. A glimmering flash of silver preceeded the tips of a dozen arm thick roots tumbling into the bowl.

“Or that,” Markus said agreeably. Emmaline flopped down and pulled off her shapeless seaman’s boots, rubbing at her throbbing feet. Markus gathered the severed timbers and piled them together to make a fire. He looked up at Emmaline who snapped her fingers, kindling fire into the dry wood.



“You’re not nearly so useless on land,” Markus observed charitably.

“How kind of you to say,” Emmaline retorted. Markus laughed and pinched her bottom as he passed, climbing out of the bowl.

“I’ll find us something to eat,” the pirate promised.





By the time Markus returned, Emmaline had managed to coax the fire into a decent blaze. She was no ranger, but even a poor gold wizard had a basic understanding of how fire and air worked together. The pirate appeared out of the gloom, a small deer slung across his shoulders. How he had managed to catch the thing Emmaline had no idea, but a sword stroke across its throat had already drained the things blood. He dropped it on the leaf litter thirty feet from the bowl and began filleting the thing with his sword blade. Emmaline didn’t even have a belt knife to help, but she found a couple of long sticks to make skewers. In a few minutes they had venison smoking on the skewers, the smell of hot meat making Emmaline’s stomach grumble. Shipboard rations tended towards salt beef, and she had to admit she was eager for something a little richer.



“Shame we don’t have any wine,” Emmaline sighed as she blew on the steaming meat.

“That is where you start wishing?” Markus laughed mirthlessly. The pirate captain wasn’t in a good mood. Emmaline knew the fate of the ship and the crew weighed heavily on him.



“Well I suppose I could have the Reiksguard and the Artillery School bring me wine,” Emmaline conceded, expanding her scope. Markus’ laugh was more genuine this time.





Emmaline opened her eyes as she felt something cold against her neck. She looked up and saw a dark figure, far too slender to be Markus, standing above her. Its eyes glowed almost violet in the attenuated starlight. It said something in a language Emmaline didn’t understand, but certainly wasn’t ‘keep sleeping in this hole in the ground’. Her heart hammered in her chest as she stood up slowly, hands raised.

“Well, aren’t you a pretty one, you’ll fetch a good price,” the creature, a dark elf to be sure, said in thickly accented Reikspiel. Markus was also standing, held at the end of a similar blade by another dark elf. Both of them were armored in some kind of scaly leather and wore cloaks that looked like they might have come from the hides of some great marine predator.

“This one looks strong,” the second elf declared, “a fine return on a hunting trip.” The elf grabbed the hilt of Markus’ dark elven blade and began to pull it free.

“What have we her…” the elf began but its question was cut off as Markus’ head snapped forward, his forehead connecting with the elf’s pointed nose. It exploded in a spray of blood and sent the elf staggering backwards. The one threatening Emmaline shoved her hard to ground and turned to leap at Markus. The pirate didn’t waste time trying to draw his own blade, instead he kicked out, sending a spray of ashes from the dying fire into the elf’s face. The Druchii staggered backwards but brought his blade up intime to intercept Markus’ thrust.



“Now we will see who the best swordsman…” the elf cut off suddenly as Emmaline struck him across the side of the head with a piece of timber. The elf tried to pivot to face the unexpected threat, but a second blow caught it and sent it tumbling to the ground. Markus stepped forward and thrust the point of his blade into the stunned elf’s throat. It started up in wide eyed surprise, unable to believe it even as its blood spilled to the forest floor. Raven’s cawed overhead.

Fortune & Glory: Grimdark Pulp RP

“Seems a bit thin to me,” Otar said. At least Jocasta thought it was Otar. It wasn’t that the dwarves looked similar, they were as varied as any gaggle of students back in Andred, but they rarely refered to each other by name. It wasn’t clear whether this was a peculiarity of dwarven culture, or simply a result of extreme familiarity among this particular group. Without the reinforcement of the names they had originally given Jocasta had lost track and it wasn’t politic to ask Beren to repeat it to her in mixed company. Not, that the dwarves were exactly being polite as it was. The group was sitting on the patio of a tavern across from the forge, drinking mugs of ale from wooden tankards. It was pleasant enough, though Jocasta suspected the pubs chief attraction was it allowed the dwarves to keep an eye on their premises. There was no open hatred for dwarves in the city, but as outsiders they were liable to the target of petty crime ranging from vandalism to theft.



“You’re welcome,” Jocasta said in some exasperation. She had expected the dwarves to react with more enthusiasm to the news. Otar gave her a level look, though some of the others looked a little shamefaced at the lack of charity.



“It’s just, we’ve run down more prominent leads before and come up short,” Varin replied, his tone a little apologetic. The other dwarves nodded in agreement. Jocasta downed her ale and waved for another. She knit her brows together for a moment and then the irritation drained from her face.



“You’re probably right,” she agreed, a sly look coming to her face.

“Infact I wouldn’t even bother checking it out,” she said. Beren looked amazed at this sudden reversal in Jocasta. She smiled innocently as the barmaid brought another tankard of ale and swept up the copper piece Jocasta slid out of her purse. Otar looked suddenly suspicious. No doubt he was thinking that Jocasta and Beren might check it out themselves.



“Even if you found it you wouldn’t be able to open the doors,” Otar scoffed. Jocasta looked as innocent as a babe in the woods. Otar’s eyes flickered between Beren and the sorceress, his face contorting into a scowl. No doubt he was wondering how much knowledge a dwarf friend might have. No doubt the idea of a pair of humans looting a lost dwarf hold was anathema to him.

“Fine. We will check it out after the Founding day tomorrow. We have given our words to deliver the fireworks and another day wont matter one way or the other.”

Gold & Glory: AU thread

Emmaline laid her head against the gunnel of the boat trembling faintly in the aftershocks of her seasickness. She was about as wrung out as she had ever been. The spells she had been working were not complex. Sea serpents were on average about as intelligence as the Altdorf street patrol which ranked them a little above dogs and a little below pigs. Even so, maintaining the illusions had been very draining. She was also trying very hard not to imagine the Hammer being swarmed by the cruel dark elves, its crew being dragged into the bowels of the Black Ark to suffer slavery and worse. More than once she had heard experienced crewman state that it would be better to touch off the powder magazine than submit to the Druckles as they slang termed them.

The land was approaching quickly, the wavelets beginning to toss the boat as the waters shoaled. Emmaline hauled herself up and started to wretch into the gray water. Markus let go of the oars and stood up, grabbing her by the arm and hauling her to her feet.

“No time for that,” Markus snapped, propelling her towards the front of the boat with a shove.

“It’s too rocky to properly land, we will probably…”

There was a sudden crunch and the boat pitched violently as submerged rocks stove in the front timbers. Emmaline squawked in alarm as she pitched violently over the bow and into the frothing waters. She gasped as she hit the surf. It wasn’t the icy kiss of death she expected, but it was cold enough to knock the breath from her. For a miracle she missed the large rocks just beneath the surface. Her natural buoyancy lifted her up and she sucked in a mouthful of salty air. A wave knocked her into a slimy rock and she stroked inexpertly towards the rocky strand. With the drive of the surf and a little luck she managed to wash up on the graveled beach, gasping and shivering.

“Markus!” she called as she forced herself up on her elbows. She needn’t have sounded so worried. The captain was was cutting through the water like a fish, dragging what few supplies he had managed to salvage from the boat, the wreckage of which was currently being dashed to splinters on the rocks.

“Ranald’s balls,” she moaned and flopped back onto her back, staring up at the gray and threatening sky.

Fortune & Glory: Grimdark Pulp RP

Jocasta grinned at Beren and then reached out and squeezed Beren’s muscled bicep in an approving manner. A few of the various acolytes gave them some strange looks, but no one commented. Rough and ready adventurers clearly weren’t so unusual as to arouse comments.

“So any idea where you want to start?” Beren asked as they walked down one of the cluttered aisles. Shelves on both sides groaned under the weight of ancient books and Jocasta had a momentary image of being buried in a vellum avalanche

“I don’t suppose they have an ‘ancient dwarf fortress’ section,” Jocasta mused. They rounded a corner into a large antechamber in which literal pillars of books reached towards the sky. A few scholars seemed to be making an effort to do a rough sort of the contents. Jocasta suspected that she would be long dead before the project made any useful progress. As they watched, one of the teetering stacks began to lean. Jocasta opened her mouth to shout a warning, but froze, figuring there was nothing she could add that would do anything other than sow further confusion. With glacial slowness the books tilted sideways and then collapsed into two other stacks. Dust and must exploded upwards in all directions as they collapsed into ruins. There was a wind rush of a thousand rustling pages that was almost deafening. As the dust settled Jocasta saw that one of the scholars had been buried to the waist and was cursing fluently in several languages.

“I’m going to tentatively say… no,” Beren observed when the dust had begun to settle and Jocasta’s comical wince began to relax.

“Fortunately… I’ve done this kind of thing before,” Jocasta said. Reaching into a pouch she rummaged around for several long moments and then came out with a pair of large glasses with lenses of bright green glass and polished rims of brass that had been painstakingly inlay with sigils. One of the lenses was crazed and broken, crushed at some point during their adventures. She tutted in irritation and then snapped the glasses at the bridge of the nose. She slipped the surviving lens over her left eye and turned to Beren.

“Woah,” he said in shock. Jocasta’s left eye appeared huge in the lens, almost insectile, her black pupil darted left and right.

“Sorry, I forget what these things look like,” she apologized. Beren opened his mouth but closed it again without speaking.

“If you were about to ask what they do, other than make me look like a bug, they let me tell the age of documents. I figure whatever documents your friends need are likely to be among the oldest,” She explained. There was no real guarantee that was true. Someone might have stumbled on it a year ago and scribbled the information on the back of a recipe book, but the balance of probabilities was in her favor.

“I hope you're ready to hold some ladders!”

__________

“Well I’ll be damned,” Beren marveled. They were seated at a stone table surrounded by dozens of moldering tomes. The remnants of a large meat pie, procured from a local chop house after several house of searching the library, sat on one corner as did a couple of stone crocks of cider.
“Looks dwarfish right?” Jocasta said as she lifted a book she had found wedged under a table.

“Dwarven, but yes,” Beren replied. The object in question was a family crest on the inside of a rather boring genealogy that detailed the small deeds of minor aristocrats. The heraldry was very mundane, a quartered shield in blue and white with a lion rampant in one corner and an odd symbol in the inverse.

“It looks like someone copied a dwarven rune, badly, it could be a couple of different things,” Beren said. Jocasta dug through her pile of books and found another work, this one on the noble families of the area some five hundred years ago. She leafed furiously through it until she arrived at the same blue and white crest. The rune was visible on this one too, though subtly different in shape.

“I’d say that is…part of a warding,” Beren said slowly, turning the book upside down to reorient the rune.

“The sort of thing one might find outside a dwarven city?” Jocasta asked.

“Maybe, but other places too,” he conceded. Jocasta read the archaic language. The text made no mention of how the device had come to be. A history of local heraldry might help but there was no guarantee such a thing existed in the library.

“I’m willing to bet you that this family, the.. Morloke’s, found this somewhere on their land and incorporated it into their coat of arms,” Jocasta postulated.

“According to the records they still hold their estate. Or did fifty years ago anyway. The story of how they found it might be in family folklore.”