Penny

Pirates - Ye Be Warned

“A month?” Jess mulled it over, laying the smoking musket down on the table. “Sounds reasonable.” Keel hauling a man wasn’t properly within a captains purview, such a thing would require a vote from the crew, as did most major decisions aboard a pirate ship, but now wasn’t the time to give a lecture on the customs that governed the Bretheren.

“Sail ho!” a shout came from the deck and Jess was on her feet, catlike and headed out the door, black coat training behind her. Warm rain lashed her as she gained the deck, Galt trailing along behind her for lack of any other realistic option.

“Where away?!” Jess demanded, cuping her hands around her mouth to be heard in the rigging.

“Three points off the starboard bow!” came the response. With the ease of long practice Jess scrambled up the ratlines, hooking an elbow through the ropes to hold steady while she pulled a spy glass from her coat and peered through it.

“Two sails!” came a cry from the topmen a moment before Jess settled on the white smudge on the darkened sky. The sails seemed to fluoresce slightly and her stomach plunged.

“Three point a’larboard! Krycek pipe all hands! Hands aloft to set royals! Hands aloft set staysails!”

“Three points a’larboard! Aye Captain!” Sevante the helmsman cried, leaning hard on the wheel and opening the angle between the Witch and the approaching sails.

“Sail ho! Three sails five points to starboard!” the topman shouted as Jess slid down the ratlines to land on the deck. Krycek’s pipes began to shrill and a moment later crewmen were swarming up the ratlines to shake out fresh canvas.

“What is happening?” Galt demanded, aware that something was wrong but without the maritime background to know what.

“Glimmers,” Jess responded tersely.

“There is no such thing,” Galt began to scoff but the words died away as he saw the deadly serious expression on Jess’ face. Exactly what Glimmers were was a matter of debate among dockside taverns and gambling dens. They appeared to be ships, partially or completely woven out of moonlight, complete with spectral crews. They seemed to come out of Shimmersea though they had been spotted as far west as the narrows. Wherever they came from they were merciless killers of any that they found.

“Can we out run them?” Galt demanded, becoming alarmed to see a ghost story being treated with absolute seriousness. Jess glanced at the sky.

“With the weather, yes,” she responded tersely.

“You don’t seem happy about it,” Galt observed.

“We will have to run with the storm into Shimmersea,” she explained, pacing back and forth along the railing.

“Isn’t that… a bad idea?” Galt asked. Shimmersea was a strange and alien place. Sometimes one passed through it just like regular ocean, other times you encountered strange and alien places. Jess had even heard tell of ships that emerged from the sea years after entering it, even though only days had passed for the crew.

“Better than the glimmers, if it pleases Yande’s cold heart,” Jess prayed.

Fortune & Glory: Grimdark Pulp RP

Jocasta stared at the glowing walls in wonderment. The grubs were small, no larger than her pinky finger, but there were thousands off them. They wriggled and crawled over each other, feeding on something, perhaps minerals in the rock. The smelled faintly of something like old parchment which Jocasta found unexpectedly pleasant. She reached out a finger and laughed delightedly as one of the the grubs curled around it and began to crawl up her arm, vanishing beneath her sleeve. A moment later she was giggling for a different reason as the animal slithered up underneath her blouse, its progress faintly visible through the bluish glow beneath her garments. A second grub joined the first, then a third.

"They like ya, a good omen," Buri put in, to the accompanying nod of the rest of the dwarves. Jocasta thought they probably needed good omens and were finding them where they could but she didn't dislodge the glowing grubs as they curled up on her shoulder and wrist.

"Well, we came to find a dwarf stronghold, lets go see it," Jocasta said with a smile.

That feat was harder than she thought, they passed through several tunnels, many of which were festooned with blind bunkers and blockhouses cut into the stone. Signs of ancient combat were everywhere, and clearly the dwarves of this hold had sold their lives dearly. Ancient skeletons of dwarves and gundarogs lay scattered in profusion. In places they waded through the bones of the abhuman monsters, ancient cairns marking particularly cunning or tenacious dwarven defenses. Both Beren and the dwarves greeted this with sullen stoicism. This front melted away when they stepped through another of the interminable series of low arches and a cavern opened out before them. It fell away in breathtaking defile, a vast space well over a mile long. Great stalactites fell from the ceiling far above, but they had been improved wth intricate brickwork so that spiraling stair cases wide enough for ten horsemen climbed them and bridges ran between the pillars like spreading spiders webs. Palaces and homes dotted the cavern, though they largely seemed built into the walls with vast open areas given over to fungal forests which might once have been something like cropland. Canals crisscrossed the space, many dry but some glutted with dark water and clogged with detritus. There was not a living soul to be seen.

"Wow..." Jocasta breathed in honest awe.

Bodacious Bounties: Bounty Hunter AU

Jocasta rechalked the que as she considered the table. Cygi appeared behind he in the clothing of a boxing coach, massaging her shoulders with fingers that she couldn't feel. She surveyed the balls, knowing that as she drank more her ability to make fancy shots would fall. Fortunately all pilots learned to do complicated vector calculations in their heads, which probably accounted for their fondness for the game.

"Edwards won't find the going so easy next time," one of the commentators was saying. "He suckered Varkin this time but he won't get away with that again."

Jocasta closed one eye to sight her shot and struck the que ball hard and slightly to the side, imparting a vicious spin that made the ball seem to curve around one of Neil's it struck one of hers, knocking it into the hole and then bounced of the edge to nudge another into a separate pocket. She whooped in triumph and blew chalk from the end of her stick like a gun fighter blowing smoke.

"I'm willing to bet the punters wont get anything like the same odds for his next fight," the commentator continued.

"I don't know Chet," his partner replied, "sometimes these guys get luck once and flame out!"

Bodacious Bounties: Bounty Hunter AU

"Well you wouldn't be the first man to boast of his prowess with a stick and come up short," Jocasta teased. Neil leaned forward with a snort and peered down the que lining up a shot. Jocasta picked up a bottle of opaque white liquor and peered at it unable to decipher the alien script on the label. Neil drew back the que and struck sending the queball cracking into one of his balls and sending it into the pocket. Jocasta arched an eyebrow and picked up one of the shot glasses which she raised in ironic salute. It tasted of pineapple and was very sour making her lips pucker up.

"Well when I boast I deliever baby," Neil assured her, moving around to take his next shot, sinking another ball. Jocasta picked up a greenish shot and knocked it back Neil grinned and then frowned, realising he didn't have another shot. He made a banked shot that clipped one of his balls, sending it spinning towards a pocket but it pulled up short.

"Aha!' Jocasta enthused, bending down and unintentionally giving Neil the same view as before, hips waggling as she carefully lined up her own shot. She tapped the ball ever so slightly. The queball rolled forward and tapped her ball, trapping the queball in an impossible position behind her own shot.

"It is snooker remember?" she teased.

"Oh leaving me with an impossible shot?" Neil asked. Jocasta winked at him.

"Putting men in impossible positions is half the fun!"

Swords and Silver: The Southern Contracts

Heat radiated from the inferno behind them, but the fire sucked air through the tunnel rather than pushing smoke into it. Bianca sayed at the rear keeping the troops nearest her from rushing forward and causing a crush. Luckily those deeper in the tunnel weren't aware that she had lit their exit on fire. If the company met organized resistance at the other end they would be trapped like rats in a hole and wiped out to the man.

The first waves came out of the tunnel in a rush, forming quickly into a wedge under the shouts and kicks of the file leaders. They spread out at a trot clambering over the mine workings and shoving overturned carts and unused bracing timbers into an improvised fortification. Fortunately the enemy's fanatical attack on the city was working in their favor and no enemy troops opposed their exit. Even with things going as well as they could it was nearly a half hour before Bianca and the rear elements emerged from the old aqueduct, soot stained and exhausted. Whatever horses and baggage they had salvaged, a dozen beasts and one of the small cannon. We would need to resupply mounts, food and almost everything very soon.

That assumed they were alive to resupply of course.

Bianca climbed up onto the embankment beside the captain. Her scouts were already assembled, leading a few of the precious horses. The Captain was peering southward with a brass bound spy glass, though with night falling and the smoke from the city and the pyre it was difficult to see too much.

"They are coming," the Captain declared, "damn it."

"Sir?" Bianca asked. The Captain handed her the glass. She peered through to see the flagging warhorss hammering across the burning plain, apparently having broken contact with the enemy.

"Where are the dwarves?" Bianca asked, but she saw them, thrown across saddles burned and beaten.

"Calli's heart?! So few?" she demanded.

"Get mounted, we are going to have to find our way out of here before they realise we are gone."

The Enemy Beyond: Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor RP

Access to the cathedral was via a winding flight of exterior stairs that curled around the peak. Running up several thousand steps would have been too slow, even if we weren't being shot at by trigger happy religious fanatics the whole way. Fortunately even the divine Ecclesiarchy has to eat, and a cathedral palace has alot of mouths to feed.

"Abandon your labours and leave this place, pray for repentence until the hour of the Blessed Saints Jubilee," I shouted as we entered the loading dock. It was a cave at the far side of the island where food and bulk goods were brought in by barge from the main land. A large diesl powered vessel was tied up to the internal dock. Heavy duty loader servitors trundled back and forth shifting crates and bales of cargo to a large cargo elevator at the rear of the cavern under the supervision of a handful of menials. The sudden apperance of a Sister of Battle and a touch of psycic glamor was enough to convince them that the Emperor had better use for their time.

"Are you sure you should be doing that?" Hadrian asked.

"You don't like my halo?" I asked, batting my eyelashes.

"There are serious theological implications, but I was rather thinking of the psyker sensing it," Hadrian replied as we climbed onto the elevator. Gydwyn, apparently familiar with cargo loading equipment, worked the control panel and got us rumbling upwards into the bowels of the Church.

"Even if he is conscious he won't be able to speak coherently," I explained, a little pride in my voice. The psychic trauma of being forcibly re-incorporated was considerable.

"We have the advantage then," Hadrian said as he checked the load on his looted rifle. I wasn't entirely sure that the three of us had any advantage over an armed force of hundreds of Fraternus Militia but chose not to step on the optimistic notion. The elevator opened onto what must have been a warehouse space. I could smell food coming from an industrial kitchen somewhere ahead of us. Servitors trundled forward milling around in confusion when their sensors registered there were no supplies.

"Any idea where Vorn will be?' Hadrian asked as we swept forward to a large stairway. I knocked several crates over by accident, the bulk of the power armor still throwing me.

"There is a chapel of the central nave, Vorn and the Psyker are there, or they were fifteen minutes ago," I told him.

"Let's go."

________

To my surprise Hadrian had considerable knowledge of Imperial sacred architecture and lead us through the maze of chapels and reliquaries towards the central chapel. There were considerable numbers of people around, but a Sister of Battle striding purposefully with two attendants was enough to get us by with little beside awed looks. Eventually though we were forced to cross the nave. It was a vast hall, hundreds of meters long supported by intricate pillars, each ten feet in diameter and a masterwork of carven oozlite. They were wrought in the shape of tiny human figures, many hundreds of thousands of them. At the bases were carved serfs, Administratum drones, and other lowly servants. It mounted rank after rank to reveal the entire social order of the imperium, with the great lords and prelates perched far above, out of sight. I thought there might be a message there that the architects had not intended.

The hall itself was thronged with pilgrims dressed in the robes of a hundred worlds. Priests in white robes shouted homilies from gilded prayer balconies. Cyber cherubs with masks of verdigris copper fluttered around with donation boxes or pict screens displaying Imperial verse. The air was filled with the suurence of several thousand people speaking in low voices and several hundred screaming preachers. Here and there a flagellant displayed wounds they had inflicted on themselves or received upon pilgrimage. One man, evidently not having purchased the proper permit, was dragged away by a pair of temple wardens with iron capped bo-staves. Nobles walked with retinues of guards, their weapons ostentatiously peace bound with gilded ribbons and seals. This didn’t stop them from keeping the rabble back with cudgels and rifle butts.

My presence cut a path through the crowd, a combination of religious awe and the practical bulk of powered armor. We were halfway across the nave when a group of robed women with prayer beads and veils parted and we found ourselves face to face with a second power armored figure. Tertius Vorn stood beside Cardinal Molmenieu and his retinue. The Cardinal was an active man in early middle age, gesturing to emphasize some point to Vorn. He was so engrossed in the conversation that he kept going a few steps after Vorn froze at the sight of us. He pulled up suddenly as he realized Vorn was no longer keeping pace. The cardinal’s retinue of priests, scribes and relic bearers undulated like a sea snake as a pocket of deadly silence descended in our little section of the vast nave.

The Enemy Beyond: Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor RP

The driver, one of Urien’s men, swore as he wrestled with the controls. The aircar was wobbling southward toward the Church of Saint Tenebrac the Blind, which apparently doubled as the residence of Cardinal Molmenieu. His Eminence was famously reclusive, though his theological opinions carried almost as much weight as the late and lamented Ratsini.

“Problem?” Hadrian demanded as our erratic progress continued, lifter plates crackling audibly.

“Ez aye civilian model, nay set up tae carrae yon hefty bint,” the driver replied without taking his eyes from the controls.

“Did he just call me fat?” I asked a trifle incredulously. Hadrian nodded in apparent comprehension.

“It is the several hundred pound of wardrobe,” he explained, nodding to the power armor. I folded my arms with the gentle whine of servos and moved into the middle of the back seat, doing my best to even out the load on the lifter plates. The air car steadied, though it obviously still handled poorly.

We flew out over one of the innumerable turreted walls and over a bleak expanse of rocky wilderness studded with occasional white bones. The Holy Round was a tradition, where pilgrims attempted to circle the city 999 times barefoot and eating only what they found on the trail. The pilgrimage could take over a year depending on conditions and it was forbidden to aid a fallen worshiper, as death in such a pursuit was considered to be favorable in the Emperor’s eyes. There were hundreds of people down there now, the numbers swollen by the Jubilee and the election. I wondered how many of them would survive to complete the pilgrimage.

We reached the coast and turned north, passing over dark purple seas being traversed by brightly painted barges in long lines, taking pilgrims too and from various island shrines in the off shore archipelagos. The sun was setting but the craft were brilliantly visible due to the luminescent algae disturbed by their bows and the sun struck slicks of promethium byproducts they left behind. Each barge was decked out with lanterns of painted paper and plastec in a variety of soft pastel colors. Doubtless they had some religious significance beyond their pleasant aspect.

The Church of Saint Tenebrac the blind completely covered the largest of a trio of islands that reared up out of the sea ahead. Thousands of lumen globes and votive candles glimmered across its battlements and along the bridges which connected it to the smaller islands where lesser shrines and other services appeared to be concentrated. The vox squawked as we closed in.

“They wan clayrence kades,” the driver said, sounding a little nervous.

“Broadcast that we are from Primate Fulstes on official Ministorum business,” Hadrian directed. The driver did as he was told, speaking tersely into the vox set as we drew closer.

“The sae we cannae land at the church, securitae they sae,” the driver said after a few moments. I felt the touch of a foreign mind brush against us like a wet leaf. Hadrian stiffened too, his talents were less subtle than mine, but he had the benefit of Ordos training to detect mental intrusion. The foreign mind crystallized into hostility in a moment, moving from curious to hostile in the blink of an eye.

“Smoke!” Hadrian shouted and I was aware of the glowing trail of a missile launch on the battlements. I felt the engines of the aircar roar into overdrive but I was already slumping, my mind leaving my body and soaring out to meet our unseen attacker. My thought form was that of my own body rendered in golden light, held aloft by nebulous wings. The hostile psyker was a dark serpentine shape, snapping fangs of darkness at us. I surged in to meet him, and I could tell from the taste of his energy that it was a him, smashing aside his attack on the car. My thought form burned away chunks of his dark pshycoplasm as I tore into him with my mind, exploiting his surprise to the utmost. The hostile presence shrieked in his mind at the unexpected attack and lashed out at me, hurling me away. I dived down towards the surface of the ocean, and he came after me, jaws agape. I hit the water a moment before his fangs could close, bursting outwards in all directions in the shimmer of the promethium residues. My mind split into dozens of Emmaline’s moving up and outwards in dozens of separate directions. The serpent like thought form became that of a hydra, each head attempting to chase a different fragment of my consciousness. The streaks of golden light merged above the hydra into a single form and my whole mind drove downwards at his fragmented attention like a golden harpoon. I punched through his mind form and felt him scream in rage and pain. The word? The name? Ciscus, formed in my mind as I hit the surface of the water. A great geyser of steam shot skyward having no apparent origin to anyone that happened to be watching. I split my mind again trying to escape in the refracted light of the steam, but he wasn’t to be fooled the same way twice. His thought form spread into a sheet above me and began to close at the edges like vast dark jaws. Mental nets began to snatch up individual fragments and I hastily pulled them together to avoid being annihilated piece meal, my psyche burning as though scalded with hot steam. I pulled my mind together around my core identity, forging protruding spines out of the individual fragments of consciousness. Ciscus screamed as his thought form closed around my thorny mind, and I spurted away through the first spine to break free, exploding outwards like a directional charge.

Through my waking eyes I was cognizant of Hadrian screaming at the driver as our car plunged towards the surface of the sea. Something was on fire and I could see holes in the side paneling. The taste of burning insulation burned in my throat. I pulled my full attention back to the mental struggle, leaving my physical well being to Hadrian. I had the impression that I was as strong as Ciscus, perhaps stronger, but my gifts had always been those of subterfuge and enchantment, rather than the violence we were currently wreaking on each other. He, on the other hand, seemed perfectly comfortable with this kind of battle.

I sped away from the air car, my mind form becoming that of a golden bird flitting low across the wave tops. I arrowed toward the main island and the Church, quite sure that somewhere in that ancient edifice my adversary lay as helpless as I was while we waged our mental duel. He followed me in the form of a hunting wyvern composed of animate shadow. I swept around the base of the island, votive candles flaring as my spirit passed. The dragon snapped at my heels, forcing me to weave and dodge, flying under the long slender bridges that connected the smaller islands to the Church. Although we were invisible, our presence was not unremarked. Milk soured in the glass, time pieces stopped or spun crazily in reverse, games of chance went haywire in improbable strings of good or bad luck, lumens flared or dimmed unexpectedly.

Round and round we went, circling the island at phenomenal speed. He was the hunter now, his greater experience giving him confidence that I was prey. Moment by moment he gained on me, closing the psychic distance as he moved in for the kill. Our speed was phenomenal, circling the island dozens of times each second, the shallow water of the channel dimpling and forming whirlpools as we whipped overhead. He was nearly on me, the hate and smug sense of victory pouring off him like the heat of a furnace. His jaws closed around me, blotting out the fading light as the snapped shut, diving mental fangs down on… nothing. He had less than a second to realize his mistake, before my entire essence came roaring out of one of the votive candles. Each time I circled I had squirreled a tiny fragment of myself away in the flickering light, until the thing that he chased was nothing but a hollow construct.

There was no time for him to appreciate my trick. I hit him as a spear of golden light, with all of our combined metaphysical momentum. I punched into him like a pike spitting a charging horse. His thought form shattered into a thousand shards as every votive candle in the church exploded in a fireball of burning wax. I clawed at the shards, going for the kill, but he fled to the refuge of his body. I had a momentary vision of the chapel where he lay upon the stone floor, its expensive tapestries burning from the candle detonation. Someone, Vorn, seized the unconscious psyker by the shoulders and shouted something at him.

Then I was back in my body. I opened my eyes and gasped. Hadrian’s lips were on mine, in the act of resuscitating me. I had been so focused on the mental struggle that I had apparently forgotten to breathe. I pushed Hadrian away by instinct, nearly driving him through the back of the car seat with my power armor augmented strength. If it bothered him he didn’t show it. I became aware of the screaming of overloading engines and the vertiginous drop of the air car.

“We need to... !” Hadrian shouted, but the words were cut off as the aircar struck the ocean with a tremendous sound, like a giant stone skipping on ice. The pilot had brought us in a flat angle and we bounced once, twice, three times, the car entering an uncontrolled spin. We hit the beach on a bow wave of spray, sliding to a halt at the edge of the water, sand scraping the underside of the wreck as we slid ashore on one of the small connecting islands.

“I need to ask whoreson Urien for meer monae,” the driver muttered, pulling his shaking hands away from the steering yolk.

Penny's Pencils

At The Edge of The World

The chain that suspended the gem was a long one, and the diamond disappeared between my breasts as we hurried back to the camp. The moon must have been peaking through the clouds overhead affording us better light. The sentries, a pair of the surviving Prostates, lifted their crossbows, then lowered them as they saw who it was. They shared knowing looks and set their weapons down, returning to their vigil.

The next day dawned bright and clear, the sun beating down to lift steam from the rain sodden jungle in long streamers. The haunted aspect it had possessed since the rain stared appeared to have lifted also and the improvement in morale became marked when we hit a large trail, almost a road, that Beren assured us lead to Darkwater Crossing. Surprisingly the road wasn't a muddy lake, being drained by a large ditch that ran along side it and laid with timber that occasionally protruded from the reddish volcanic dirt packed atop it. To the south the ground fell away to the black river, a dark ribbon of water several hundred yards wide. It was swollen with the recent rains, up over its banks as evidenced by partially submerged trees. Dozens of craft made their way along it, most no larger than the barge Beren had commanded when I first met him, though a few were respectable vessels with one or two masts.

The city of Darkwater Crossing was a smudge of chimney smoke on the horizon, though it seemed we would be there before too much long. I looked down at the reddish mud already caking my boots.

"I do hope you are right about the baths," I complained.

Fortune & Glory: Grimdark Pulp RP

"Any chance they are still around?" Jocasta asked, sticking her head into the tunnel that marred the wall. She pulled a lens of ground green crystal down from her sun hat and peered into the darkness. It curved away out of sight into the distance. There were odd discolourations on the wall which she took to be gundarog script. She wasn't entirely sure what the writings might signify, perhaps no more than crude grafitti.

"Every chance," Otar growled, his voice simmering with ancient racial anger. The other dwarves were simillarly exercised, knuckles white on weapons, shoulders set.

"No chance we can get back up?" Jocasta asked, swinging her lens covered eye up to the hole above them and the broken dragon at the bottom like a busted kite.

"Aye, we can probably climb..." The world lurched violently sideways. There was a rumbling crack and dust exploded from the walls of the cavern. Rocks tumbled down in an ever increasing torrent. Boulders the size of wagons crashed down, pulping the body of the dragon like great cannonballs from the sky. The dwarves moved with the same mechanical motion they had displayed in the crypt, pressing themselves into the walls. Dust billowed in great waves, washing over Jocasta a moment before Beren grabbed her around the waist and hurled her back into the dwarven tunnels. A moment before she was yanked away she got a brief glance of a familiar demonic figure in the billowing dust, a braod smile on its face.