Penny

Tricksters and Theives: A Warhammer RP

Emmaline whispered her spell as she allowed the coarse gunpowder to slide through her fingers and down into the barrel of Neil's rifle. She had the thing gripped between her thighs as she lay back on a couch that had been pulled into the drawing room. A barely perceptible shimmer spread across the powder as it trickled in, the spell improving and transmuting it. Once the charge was in Emmaline spat the lead ball, into the barrel, quickly enough that its golden sheen wasn't visible, then stuffed the cartridge paper in after it and plied the rammer to drive it all down to the base.

"That's downright distracting," Brandt, a grizzled looking Middenlander muttered, pulling his eyes away from Emmaline to resume his vigil. The loading completed, Emmaline passed the rifle to Neil who took it from her without taking his eyes from the tree line. He eased the hammer back to full cock with a soft click of oiled metal.

They were in an upstairs drawing room, disheveled and ransacked by the thieves earlier attentions. fine books carpeted the floor where they had been scattered, pages flapping in the breeze that came through the open windows. A portrait of a portly scowling woman hung askew on one wall, the cuts made by throwing knives disfiguring her face. Johann and the majority of the men were downstairs, trying to keep an eye on all the entrances at once, now they had piled enough furniture against the cellar doors that the Skaven couldn't come through without considerable noise and effort.

"Why don't they just rush us?" Brandt muttered, his knuckles tight on the stock of his crossbow. Emmaline risked raising herself on her elbows to take a look at the woods. She could see movement as the skaven skuttled about in the shadows at the limit of visibility. Neil edged his rifle up onto the coffee table he was using as a rest and sighted down the long length of the weapon, mouthing something to himself.

"They don't know how many of us there are?" Emmaline supposed. They had driven back the Skaven twice, though it had been luck and firearms that had turned the tide.

"They are probably waiting for dark," Neil suggested, "rats always prefer to play..." The rifle cracked, crack physically painful to the ears, vomiting a lance of flame that light the late afternoon gloom like a lantern for a half second. There was a thrashing in the trees and then an armored rat staggered out, clutching at a fist sized hole in it's chest. It fell to it's knees, crawled a half pace towards the manor, then expired with a a final thrash of it's tail.

"..at night," Neil concluded, handing the weapon back to Emmaline who bit the top off a fresh cartridge and began to reload again. Brandt looked at Neil's rifle in surprise.

"Never known a gun to make so little smoke," he admitted.

"Nuln powder," Neil explained, pointedly not looking at where Emmaline was once again muttering silently over his weapon.

"Besides, there are more of them now. I think they are just gathering their strength..."

_______________________

'Charge-charge!" Quagar Gutgnawer squeaked, kicking and shoving the clan rats forward as he took the place of honor at the rear. It was an hour after sundown now and the pink things would have trouble seeing. The remaining jezail teams fired, lighting the darkened woodlands with the sickly green flashes of their weapons as they hammered the windows the pink things had been firing from. There were nearly fifty clan rats with him now. More had been trickling in over the last few hours, eager to for the kill and to claim some of the warptokens that the Grey Seer was offering in reward for these particular pink things. Quagar would have liked to have waited for more, but each passing hour increased the likely hood that a more formidable champion would arrive and take over his small war paw. The clan rats lashed their tails and charged, leaping out of the trees and over the small stone wall as they rushed towards the house.

Muzzle flash and powder smoke erupted from the pink thing burrow and a half dozen clan rats went down under the churning feet of their fellows. The air was suddenly thick with the musk of fear but Quagar lashed at the back of his clan rats with his halberd, making sure they realised what would happen to them if they grew more afraid of the pink things than they were of him. All of those warp tokens were going to be his.. assuming no one betrayed him of coarse.

_______________________

Emmaline felt her stomach tighten as the rats reached the house. Glass shattered and wood boomed as the creatures hit the side of the house in a frenzy, trampling the flower beds and thrusting their weapons through the windows. Johann fired his coach gun into them at point blank range killing two and wounding a half dozen more. The other bandits fired their pistols or hacked at their attackers with their weapons. Steel scraped on steel and rats and men screamed and cursed in their own languages. The air was filled with an acrid stink like rotten urine that made Emmaline gag as she furiously tried to reload Neil's rifle.

"No time babe," Neil replied, his voice tight but calm as he took the gun from her hands and slung it, half loaded. As she watched one of the bandits took the point of a spear in the chest, he screamed in pain and staggered back as one of his fellows thrust a pistol into the Skaven's jaw and pulled the trigger. The wounded man staggered back, clutching the bloody rent and swinging an axe one handed.

"They are coming through the back!" Gert, a stocky Rieklander with an evil scar across his face piped in a surprisingly high and panicked voice. The crash of shattered windows and broken doors sounded behind them. Neil shoved her backwards, ducked under a cut from a rusty sword, and thrust upwards through the chest of a rat with his shortsword, backpedaling all the while. Emmaline felt an icy chill wash over her.

"We have to make a run for it!" she whispered to Neil.

"Back! Back!" Johann roared, clubbing one of the rat things with the butt of his coach gun and stumbling backwards. Rats were coming through the windows now, slithering with all the abhorrent grace of their smaller brethren. Emmaline turned and ran, running into the black and white tiled parlor. A pair of massive rats with long rusted swords were coming in from the other side. Screaming in terror she snatched up a bottled of brandy and hurled it at them. One of them cut at it in mid air and the bottle shattered into a thousand pieces spraying a cloud of liquor and glass. Emmaline snapped her fingers and the cloud exploded with a dull whoomph sending both rats to the ground battering at the flames that suddenly engulfed them. The air stank of brandy and burning fur as well as the acrid stink that had assailed her nostrils earlier. Neil grabbed her and dragged her back as more rats charged into the parlor. They fell back, with the remaining bandits forced up the large marble staircase to the second floor by the oncoming tide of rats. The surviving bandits, bloodied and terrified formed a plug, holding off the rats until they got behind the massive wooden doors at the top of the stairs. The doors swung shut with a boom as the bandits closed them in the face of the surging rats, throwing their shoulders against them as impacts from the other side rattled them. Brandt was muscling a heavy book case against the doors and several other bandits were furiously piling furniture up in a makeshift barricade.

"You'll have to go out the window and run for the woods," Neil said, his face grave and spattered with blood. He mopped at his handsome face with his shirt sleeve and grinned at her with confidence he certainly didn't feel.

"What about you?!" Emmaline demanded. Neil's grin grew wider but somehow frozen on his face.

"Well we can't all make it," he pointed out. Emmaline grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him, but he merely kissed her and shoved her away.

"Get going, while they are distracted," he advised.

"Neil, this is no time to be struck with a bad case of nobility," she snapped, her voice wild and desperate. Axes were hammering in the doors now, and the bandits were furiously reloading their firearms.

"Caught between an army of skaven and an army of beastmen? Why, it is the text book time for it. It is something right out of a play," he quipped. Emmaline opened her mouth to snap a response then her eyes suddenly went wide.

"Babe you are wasting...."

"Make sure I'm not distracted!" Emmaline shouted as she bolted for the parlor as fast as her legs would carry her. Johann shook his head in wonder as he clapped Neil on the shoulder.

"Make sure she isn't distracted she says," he muttered in wonder.

______

Emmaline ran into the parlor and pulled open the case in which the warpstone was shielded. She could feel the magical energy radiating off it in an instant. The howl of the Skaven outside seemed to intensify though that might just have been her imagination. She gingerly kicked a piece of the faintly glowing green rock free of the case then squatted over it and began to mutter a spell. She worked the words over and over again, racking her brain to remember her spotty lessons on spell craft as she did so. All she had to do was...

Above the manor, out of sight of the battling men and skaven, a giant golden disc exploded into being. It shone like a small sun above the manor house, turning in slow lazy circles. It cast a radiance down on the manor that those inside could see and the Skaven recoiled for a moment, falling back from their attack on the second story as this strange light appeared in the sky.

Quagar Gutgnawer howled in fury, desperately trying to drive his clan rats to finish the attack, the pink skin were trapped, and enough warpstone to start his own clan would soon be his. His stomach growled with hunger and his mouth filled with saliva at the idea of feasting on soft pinkskin flesh. Just a few more minutes...

War horns sounded in the forest. Not the noble brassy sounds of Imperial horns, but the crude bone things that marked the coming of beastmen. Emmaline ran to the window and risked a peek out. As she watched horned figures burst from the woods, shaking their own weapons as they rushed towards the manor. As she watched a gor cut down a skaven, pausing over its body to bray and howl at the golden light above. More and more of the creatures rushed from the forest, and the skaven recoiled, trapped in the manor as the beastman came rushing to the strange beacon.

"What is happening," Neil demanded as Emmaline reemerged, her pack slung on her back and her eyes bright in the odd gold illumination.

"Beastmen, attacking the Skaven," she reported breathlessly.

"And this helps us how?" Neil demanded, he was taking advantage of the slackening fight to reload his rifle once again.

"The first rule of any con is to make them look in the wrong direction," Emmaline explained. The doors were barely holding together, hacked and crazed with blows from axes and polearms. The bandits looked bloodied, terrified, and exhausted. Emmaline could only hope they had enough left in them.

"Heroic last stands are for fools and heroes!" she called out in a loud theatrical voice.

"I for one intend to die fat, happy, and far from here!" Several of the bandits yelled in agreement.

"Ranald would be ashamed of me if I let myself get cut to dog meat in a place that I didn't even get to rob!" she went on, earning chuckles and half hearted cheers from the surviving bandits.

"So what's say we stop playing soldier and get the hell out of here!"

"How are we going to get passed two bloody armies?" Gert demanded, crossing his blood spattered arms. Emmaline's smile lit the room.

"I'm so glad you asked.."

_______

The doors flew open while the Skaven below grappled with the beastmen. Liquor bottles sailed down the stairwell, hunks of burning petticoats stuffed into their necks. They struck the marble floors below and exploded in flames as the bandits came charging down the stairs, forming a tight wedge around Emmaline. Neil fired his rifle at the run, the bullet punching through two Skaven and sending them both spinning to the ground. Pistols cracked and Brandt's crossbow thrummed as they cut their way through the distracted Skaven.

"Kill-kill!" A large skaven was shouting as he decapitated a roaring elkheaded beastman with a swipe of his sword. The Skaven tried to react hacking at the humans as they passed, but the chaos was too complete to allow them to focus their efforts. Emmaline reached the cellar door and touched it, reversing her spell. The doors fell open and the humans half fell half ran down the narrow stairwell into the darkness. Skaven surged after them but the narrow gap hindered their pursuit. They descended into the underground wine cellar, racing past man sized oaken barrels filled with wine and ale.

"There!" Neil yelled pointing to the old drain that the Skaven had used when they first tried to infiltrate the manor. The bandits ran for it, all save Clause, Emmaline and Neil. Clause was furiously swinging his axe, staving in barrel after barrel in sprays of splintered wood. Liquor poured free, spilling onto the floor of the cellar in shining pools. Skaven were pouring down after them now, as much to flee the beastmen as in pursuit, their beady eyes glowing in the darkness.

"That's enough!" Emmaline shouted and Neil grabbed the dim witted Clause and thrust him into the tunnel that the others were already using to flee the manor.

"Come on babe!" he shouted, but Emmaline pulled against him.

"Not quite yet... not quite.."

___________________________________________

Quagar Gutgnawer had been betrayed. Somehow the man-things were in league with the beast things. He lead the retreat from the front, following the humans down into the grape burrow below the building. He could still run them down, perhaps this would even be better. He could kill them himself and claim every single warptoken! The genius of his plan buoyed him, even as he squirted the musk of fear at the sound of what was happening to his warband above him. His feet were splashing through fluid as he pursued the man-things. The fluid stank, its pungent reek burning his nostrils like the aftermath of a gas attack. No matter, he could see one of them now just ahead of the old drainage tunnel. He was no expert but by its long fur it must have been a breeder. Foolish man-things to bring a breeder here. No matter, he would kill her and take the warpstone for himself and then... She raised her hand and made a strange gesture.....

___________________________________________

Emmaline blew a kiss at the onrushing Skaven, her lips pulled back in a grin every bit as savage as the onrushing rats. It checked for a moment in confusion. The spell ignited the spilled brandy that Clause had freed with his axe and a wall of blue flame rushed outwards like a breaking wave. Rats screamed and the smell of burning fur blasted back, overwhelming the sweet alcohol stench of brandy and the musty smell of the tunnel behind them.

"Ranald's balls," she marveled.

"Run now, pray later," Neil advised but he was grinning, even as he half dragged her into the old drain and up towards the surface.

Tricksters and Theives: A Warhammer RP

Bandit Crew

Johann - The Leader - A lean, dirt stained ruffian said. He smiled widely, revealing cracked teeth, save for one that shined like silver.

Kurt - Second in Command -

Clause - Dumb subordinate - a wall eyed man with hair the color of dirty straw chuckled lewdly.

Gert - Rieklander with an evil scar

Brandt - Crossbowman

Cogs in the Wheel: WoT RP

Zoya awoke from disquieting dreams to the smell of wood smoke and cooking fish. The aroma was so reminiscent of her childhood home that she sat up in a panic, half convinced the intervening years had been a dream. Reality reasserted itself as she banged her head on an overhead beam, dislodging a fine mist of old wood rot that drifted down like snow. A chuckle came from the direction of a small fire where Davian sat turning three long stakes over a small fire. The harsh red illumination of the blaze gave him a sinister look.

“You’re finally awake,” he commented, lifting on of the stakes from the flames to examine a fillet of meat on the end. Evidently it didn’t yet pass muster because he set it back across the flame. Zoya cocked her head, rain still pattered on the outside of the hull but the fury of the storm had ebbed to a gentle rain. Judging by the pale light coming from outside, she had slept for nearly an entire day. She rubbed her head with the heel of her hand, massaging away an incipient bruise.

“Did I pass out?” she asked, her voice rising as she realized that she had lost consciousness while channeling. She instinctively snatched for Saidar and let out gasp of relief as its warm light suffused her for a moment. It was every Aes Sedai’s secret terror that they might burn themselves out in a moment of incaution and be forever severed from the Source. Davian arched an eyebrow at the play of emotions he saw flicker across her face but answered her question.

“You did something to the box,” he explained, nodding to the ancient relic that lay beside the wadded up and mostly dry cloak that had served as her pillow.

“It opened and I saw….a vision? a map?” he replied, sounding troubled. Zoya sat upright, immediately alert and alight with enthusiasm.

“What did you see!? How was the box set? What do you mean a map?” she demanded.

“Whoa,” Davian replied in the same tone one might use to quiet a suddenly skittish horse. He took the fish from the fire and explained what he had seen, answering her questions as best he could. Zoya lifted the box and tried to mimic the same fire weave she had woven the night before. Nothing happened. She tried several more combinations but the box remained stubbornly unresponsive.

“Maybe eat before you make yourself pass out again?” Davian suggested pointedly. From his perspective she was merely staring at the box but he was clever enough to intuit that she was using the Power. Zoya set the box down and took the fish that was offered, taking a bite of the hot flesh.

“And you are sure this map started here?” she asked around a mouthful of fish. Davian nodded.

“It was as though they viewpoint swooped down on us from a great height, then moved away as I described,” Davian replied.

“A Light Saddle?” Zoya pondered.

“A what?” Davian asked, chewing his own fish.

“Some writings from the Age of Legends speak of something called a Light Saddle, or a S’talia’ite in the Old Tongue. We think they were ter’angreal which the Aes Sedai of old used to cast their vision across the Earth, maybe to predict the future. There are only a few references, some even seem to suggest they might have controlled the weather somehow,” she explained. Suddenly she wished she were back in Tar Valon where she could avail herself of the library.

“I wish I could have seen it,” she said, a tinge of longing in her voice. It seemed monumentally unfair that a vision from a past age had been granted and the only one to glimpse it was a smarmy thief catcher. Unless of course only men could see it. Unless of course only Davian could see it. Had he become attuned to the box somehow? Was it connected to the lightning strike? Her mind spun out in a spider web of supposition that she lacked the data to substantiate. First thing first. She needed to control her variables.

“I suppose it is safe to say that your contract with the High Lords of Tear is at an end?” she asked carefully.

“I’ll say,” Davian said with a snicker. Being hounded out of the city by the Defenders of the Stone was not exactly a highpoint, but Davian could truthfully say that he had found and apprehended the thief. His professional honor was intact, even if the incident was unlikely to bring him many future clients.

“Well in that case, I’d like to retain your services,” she told him. Davian’s eyebrow rose.

“You mean to…”

“To recover a certain Horn which I believe to have been stolen,” she concluded.

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!"