Penny

The Sunday Group - Seeds and Harvests

@Atalanta

Gretchen led Blythe to the back of the store, guiding her past the ancient wooden counter and through a doorway draped with beaded curtains. Beyond the curtain lay a space that seemed a blend of a thrift shop and a monastic library. In some areas, books were meticulously arranged on shelves, while in others they were haphazardly piled without any apparent order. Metal bins held rolled-up pages of printer paper, tied with colorful ribbons. Several iPads rested on chargers inside what appeared to be a Faraday cage, though the purpose of the canary perched mournfully within was anyone's guess. The abundance of items wasn’t limited to books—shelves overflowed with trinkets and baubles. Some were clearly mystical: a Hand of Glory with shockingly bright red nail polish, a dreamcatcher adorned with strange feathers. Others were baffling: a pistol wired to a graphing calculator, a deck of Pokémon cards with bloody thumbprints in the top right corner, a diorama featuring a Barbie doll atop a soda volcano. The overall effect was disorienting, with the smell of old paper mingling with spices, warm plastic, and stale coffee.

"The world would be a happier place if people researched contracts before summoning things," Gretchen remarked pointedly as she led the way to a shelf at the rear, flanked by two red brick pillars. Her hands glided over the spines of the books in a gesture that was almost sensual. Though she appeared relaxed, she kept a watchful eye on Blythe, perhaps wary of what the entity within her might do if it suspected she was cooperating in an exorcism.

"Let's see... Van Eisman's Principalities," she said, pulling a thick, turn-of-the-century volume from the shelf. Its heavy pasteboard corners were slightly bent inward. "Not bad, if you can overlook the parts about wife-swapping... Amazing how often higher powers are into that."

Gretchen moved on to another book, this one bound in a Kinko's sleeve with simple printer paper.

"Stern's Litigative Magics... might be a little elementary for you," she decided, sliding it back onto the shelf.

"Manekidasu Orosu by Takeshi no Yami," she said, tapping a thick volume with Japanese characters emblazoned on the spine thoughtfully. "It's good, but I wouldn’t recommend relying on Google Translate if you don’t speak the language."

"You know, I had a copy of the Ahlam bil-Hibr until about a week ago," she mused.

Tricksters and Theives: A Warhammer RP

Quagar Gutgnawer hissed at his subordinates in fury. He went so far as to strike out with his sword at the nearest jezzial team but the cursed skyre rat managed to jump out of the way with the loss of nothing more than a few whiskers and a squirt of the musk of fear. The cursed Skyre rats must be planning to betray him, that was why they had opened fire, wasting expensive ammunition and alerting the pink skins to their peril. He gnawed on his cheek, visibly frothing, at the mouth as his tail lashed in frustration.

"Stop-stop fool! Waste no more warptokens on these pink things!" Quagar squeaked.

"But great chieftan, the Grey seer..." the marksrat began, closing his mouth quickly as Quagar stepped towards him. The underchief was massive by skaven standards over five feet tall and fit to be a storm vermin if he hadn't been called to the higher duty of driving this pack.

"Silence! Only I speak-speak with the Grey Seer! Quagar squeaked in fury. The Horned one had indeed spoken to him. The dread rat had called him aside and told him that he had sensed the presence of much warpstone at this human burrow. Only for a moment, as though the humans were somehow shielding the blessed substance. Quagar was to seize the precious warpstone and return it to the Grey Seer so that he might use it to advance the cause of the horned rat.

"Great chief I must..." whatever the sharpshooter must do was lost as his head burst apart in a spray of blood and flying bits of bone. The cursed pink skins had jezzails of their own, something that wouldn't have mattered if Skyre treachery hadn't revealed their attack too soon. Well there was nothing to be done about it now. Quagar squirmed back down the slight slope to get out of the line of fire, being too important to risk himself so recklessly. The rock wall and apple trees provided good cover from the house. The Underchief sniffed nervously at the air. He didn't like being outside in the daylight, even on an overcast day like this. Why couldn't these pink skins live in tunnels as the Horned Rat intended? His storm vermin were gathered around the carcass of one of the four legged beasts that carried the pink things into battle, worrying at its delicious entrail with their teeth. Quagar's lips peeled back from his teeth to see such warriors. A thought crossed his mind. How many more could he equip if he took the warpstone for himself...

"Great lord!" the scout squeaked and abased himself, avoiding a decapitating strike from Quagar's sword by a fraction of an inch. Had the scout somehow overheard his plans? No he hadn't spoken aloud, he as sure of it.

"Speak-speak!" Quagar demanded.

"We have found a way into the stone burrow great lord! There is a tunnel into an underground room that stinks of grapes!" the scout squeaked.

"Of course, as I knew there would be," Quagar congratulated himself. This was the skaven way, to attack from below, not to charge across fields against jezails. He suddenly wondered if the Skyre rats were selling the weapons to the pink skins in an effort to undermine his glorious victory. His whiskered bristled with agitation.

"We show the way to your mighty warriors and..."

"What!" Quagar roared, then recovered himself, making calming gestures to the cringing scout.

"No-no, you must go, lead your scouts and the clan rats will follow yes-yes," Quagar crowed. Let the scouts get chewed up by the pink skins before his clan rats swept over them, that would ensure that if they suspected anything it would never be reported.

"At once great lord!" the scout squeaked and skuttled off to chitter at it's shabby company. Quagar flinched as another boom came from the house and a scream of pain came from somewhere among the trees. Yes. Soon all that wrapstone would be his, if he could just keep his subordinates from conspiring to ruin him...

Space Dogs: Hired Guns in a Crumbling Empire

It was amazing how useful maintenance closets could be. Large enough for a person to fit comfortably, never surveilled, rarely visited, and with access to most of a stations system. Jocasta watched through a spliced fiber feed as marines headed to the bank and then to the Huntsmen, locking down the ship and beginning a methodical search. The moved crisply, rifles at high port, sweeping methodically and professionally. It was a sight to see, and one that made Jocasta's lips turn up in a sad smile. The day was not long coming when the UNSG would abandon this sector as it strove desperately to keep itself together in face of powerful nobles and fiscal cut backs. She carefully counted the number of marines at the ship and at the bank, then slipped out.

Another benefit of maintenance closets was they usually had some spare clothes, and no one paid attention to a maintenance worker dressed in slightly ill fitting coveralls and a construction helmet. She carried a tool box and moved with no particular purpose towards the docking arm currently occupied by the UNSG Cartagena. The destroyer bulked large beyond the view port, a slender dagger shaped vessel bulged out at the end to accommodate massive engine farings. It was a battered old tub, two generations out of frontline service but still being made to work out here in the bundu.

Jocasta bought a pastry from a street vendor and took a seat where she could unobtrusively watch the ship. A single marine currently stood guard, the rest of the compliment having been dispatched. Opening her tool box she watched the progress of the rest of the marines on a hand held flatscreen which she had repurposed from a multimeter. She needed a distraction, but given that a platoon or so of marines had just commandeered and impounded the Huntsman-come-Artemis, she was fairly sure that just such a distraction would arise very soon.

Space Dogs: Hired Guns in a Crumbling Empire

The wealth of the Caliphate worked in Jocasta's favor, despite the fact that the disguise was paper thin she waltzed into the banking house of Garibaldi Stellar Credit without challenge. She provided an identification code to a teller and was immediately ushered into a plush office in which a woman sat in a blandly expensive tan suit. She looked up in surprise, scanning Jocasta up and down. The clerk stapled her fingers, revealing a manicure that would have paid half a first class fare to Capella.

"What can I do for you miss..." the clerk began.

"Ap'Glynn," Jocasta supplied. The clerk arched an eyebrow at that but made no further comment.

"I'd like to access some accounts," Jocasta said, scribbling a series of instructions onto a piece of paper and sliding it across to the clerk. The woman took the paper and began tapping away on a virtual keyboard, her eyes widening briefly.

"Have you been here long Mistress?" the clerk asked as the computer whired and fired requests into the communications arry.

"I only just arrived," Jocasta admitted.

"I didn't realize there had been any liners in the last few weeks," the clerk replied with offhanded interest.

"I actually came on a private yacht, the Huntsman, or the Artemis, I hear its being renamed," Jocasta confided.

"Your own ship?" the clerk asked enviously. Jocasta shook her head.

"Turns out I was just super cargo," she replied bitterly. The computer chirped and an armored panel extruded several stacks of high denomination dabluntz in plastic wrapped tubes.

"Please consider us for your future banking needs mistress," the clerk said with an expensive smile.

______

"Sir!" Lieutenant Edwardo Cruz snapped as his console lit up. Conversation on the bridge of the UNSGS Cartagena cut off abruptly, military training stressed quiet during combat conditions so as not to overwhelm the bridge with noise. Captain Ricardo, resplendent in a gray and silver dress uniform turned to his intelligence chief, his mustache bristling.

"Report Lieutenant," he snapped in a thick Mars accent.

"Someone on the station is accessing admiralty accounts," he reported, turning his screen omnidrectional so the crew could make out a pirated security image of a woman in a jumpsuit and a headscarf. Ricardo leaned forward his mouth dropping open in shock. It couldn't be. Not out her in the back of beyond. With the cut backs, it was hardly even in the patrol area these days.

"Master at Arms! Get a squad together and get down there, she is to be taken alive," he grated, "and find out if she has a ship and seize it at once!"

Space Dogs: Hired Guns in a Crumbling Empire

Jocasta eyed Markus for a long moment. The humor that normally sparkled in her eyes drained slowly as the green of her eyes turned from sparkling emerald to glacial ice.

"You know what? Thanks for the drink," she said, reaching out and deliberately knocking her glass over so the remainder of the beverage spilled out and ran over the slightly uneven surface of the table to drip to the ground. She stood up, ignoring the arched eyebrows of several patrons who probably assumed she was rejecting Markus on wholly different grounds and walked out of the bar smoldering.

This whole thing had been a waste of a perfectly good fusion beamer, Jocasta thought as she rode an elevator upwards into a more commercial district of the station. It would teach her to intervene in a perfectly fine assassination which was none of her concern to begin with. The upper levels of the statin were, inevitably, nicer than the others. Despite the fact that upper was arbitrary in space, humans hadn't yet been able to shake the millennia old association between height and power. Of course nicer, was a somewhat relative term. She passed the heavily guarded office fronts of several shipping houses, located cheek to jowl with a nicer cut of bars and drug dens. The thugs were better armed and of a better cut, and UNSG officers enjoyed their shore leave, strutting among the colorful civilians in austere splendor. That increased her risk somewhat. She pulled the sash up and wrapped it around her head in something close to the hijab of a Neo-Muslim then headed for the cluster of banks and trading houses located around the central copper spire of the communication ansible.

Space Dogs: Hired Guns in a Crumbling Empire

Jocasta's eyebrows raised.

"Have you got a second ship?" she asked sweetly, "because I know you aren't offering me a place on my own yacht."

"You got your sword back, I get the ship," she pointed out reasonably, "it is a fair distribution of loot based on the sentimental value of the blade." Come to think of it, she hadn't gotten her fusion beamer back either, not to mention the loss of her favorite dress.

Tricksters and Theives: A Warhammer RP

Johann did indeed have something cooking. The bandit chief was eating a breakfast of a boiled egg and a length of sausage at a writing desk that was probably worth a months rent in a decent house in Altdorf. If his goal was to look sophisticated the fact that he was eating with a dagger rather than a knife and fork undermined the effort.

"G'mornin'," he said around a mouthful of half chewed meat. He swallowed before going on.

"Did you sleep well?" he asked, with a chuckle.

"Tolerably," Emmaline replied, refusing to be drawn by the bandit. Emmaline picked a piece of sausage of the chief's plate and popped it into her mouth without evident embarrassment, earning herself an arched eyebrow from Johann. Neil stepped in before the situation could deteriorate.

"The brains trust back there said you were cooking something up," Neil said, pulling up an upholstered seat which he turned and straddled so he could cross his arms on the top of it. Emmaline leaned back against a side board which had tragically been denuded of alcohol by the bandit gang during the night.

"Aye, aye," Johann said, taking a sip of ale from a tankard. He waved it at Emmaline.

"If you sit on my knee you can have a sip," he wheedled. Reached into a pouch and withdrew a leather flask then popped the cork and took a drink of the cherry brandy within before sticking her tongue out at the bandit who shrugged in a 'you win some you lose some' motion. He gestured with greasy fingers to a cloth map he had unrolled.

"There are a number of noble estates closer to the city," Johann began, gesturing to several marks on his maps. "We looked in on a couple of them and they were already burning. Beast men, local peasants settling grudges, whatever." Emmaline could well imagine peasants setting fire to their masters property in the few moments before they fled, even though it would mean being squeezed even harder when the authorities returned. Vengeance, even small vengeance, was beyond price to the small folk.

"I figure that all the rich and fancy folk bugged out to...." he tapped a finger on the map "Strumburg."

"There will be some on the road, and some in the town, laden down with everything gold and sparkly they own," he breathed all but rubbing his palms together in anticipation.

"Well we can..." Emmaline began but before she could speak there was a sudden smell on the wind. Something reeking and animal, she saw a glint of something brassy off in the woods.

"Down!" she yelled, yanking Neil off his chair as the leaded glass of the window exploded inwards, blasting the chair he had been on to a spray of splinters and goosedown. A half dozen more shots crashed through the window in quick succession. Ale splashed everywere as Johann's tankard shattered. Miraculoulsy the bandit chief was unhit and he threw himself to the ground beside them.

"Ranald's bloody balls..." he breathed as Emmaline crawled to the lip of the window and raised her head to peak over. Hunched rat like figures were emerging from the woods. Some had long brass guns that looked like Araybian jezzails though they glowed with fell energies. More of them were emerging from the trees now, scuttling up to the walls with disgusting rodent like movements.

"Boss!" Hef called from the other room, "whatever these things are they are surrounding the place!"

Space Dogs: Hired Guns in a Crumbling Empire

Jocasta took a sip of her drink the tingle of alcohol warming the back of her throat even as the chemicals made it sparkle in her mouth, far more than simple carbonation could. It was an oddly solemn moment, as Makus finally made good on the debt he had incurred a selective lifetime ago and it was deeply satisfying. Jocasta hunched her shoulders slightly as a trio of UNSG spacers entered the bar. There was a UNSG cruiser docked on the arbitrarily named 'western' arm of the station and its several hundred personnel were taking leave. Technically this was UNSG territory but these days their writ didn't run much beyond the core systems and the Hundred Duchys. The spacers weren't exactly unwelcome, no one whose credits spent was unwelcome, but they took care to move in small groups rather than going alone.

"But Markus," Jocasta protested, "I simply haven't a thing to wear!" When they had first met she had been dressed in a flash silver evening dress, but that dress along with her few other possessions had been left on the God's Eye when they fled. There was a shopping trip in her future, at least once they sold of some of the pretties they had found aboard the Huntsman. It had been Lord Gallanis' personal yacht and was well stocked with small art objects, expensive booze, and various other fungible assets. She was dressed in a dark green flight suit that was a few sizes too big for her, the name 'Huntsman' was stenciled across its chest, but she had tied a red silk sash from shoulder to hips to cover the name. Her feet were sheathed in her combat boots, the only footwear aboard that would fit her.

"Besides, Black Eyes there isn't doing too badly," she admitted, knocking back her drink and waving for another.

"You think there is any chance your Lordly friend comes after us?"

Penny's Pencils

Tricksters and Theives: A Warhammer RP

Emmaline glanced around, relieved that the thrust of the conversation was moving away from murder and rape. She knew that Neil could handle himself, and she could probably manage something with magic but they were literally caught with their pants down. She held up her hands and shrugged in a very distracting manner to focus the eye on her.

"It's a long story," she began, then cast a remorseful look at the chocolate, "one best told over wine and chocolate I suppose. A cheer went up from the bandits and their group cohesion broke appart as they rushed to tear off chunks of the sweet confection. Johann looked annoyed at this but he stopped actively pointing his blunderbuss even if he didn't put it down.

Emmaline started from the beginning, editing the story as she went. She doubted whether these men would be reassured by their other encounters with the ruinous powers, or the skaven for that matter, and she certainly knew better than to mention their association with the Order of the Fiery heart. Emmaline became acutely aware that she had saved her Justicar outfit for a special occasion and that if these bandits rifled her pack she was in real trouble.

"Things were getting rather chaotic so we just took our chances and looted what we could," Emmaline explained making a gesture to the casket of warpstone.

"I don't know if its magical, but every time we open it we seem to be struck by bad luck," she went on, eager to encourage the thieves not to look too closely.

"I'm from Altdorf and I know some people close to the college," she continued, aware of the irony of the statement. "We are betting they will pay us a pretty penny for it, even if it is just to dispose of it safely." Johann nodded along with her explanation.

"The problem with con women is you don't know if they are conning you," he opined, "but you lad seems to have the bones of a thief."

"I'm not conning you," Emmaline said with deadly earnest, then her expression slowly turned from innocent outrage to sly wickedness, "... or am I..." Johann laughed at this and finally set his weapon down.

"Fine, I suppose there is no harm in at least camping together," he grudgingly admitted.

"I wouldn't mind doing more than camping!" one of the band called with a wolf whistle.

"Sorry boys, already been more of a free show than I intended," Emmaline replied, not quite managing to repress a blush.