Penny

Death and Desire: A Warhammer Fantasy RP

"Do you have a plan?" Bahadir asked, drawing the tip of his blade in the dirt as he watched the oncoming monsters.

Calliope hefted the saber in her hand wishing mightily she had a pistol, or better yet a half dozen cannons. Her eyes scanned the arena noting details and impressions and filling them away for later. The braying of beasts and roar of the orcs melded with the screams and cries of the crowd above them.

"Are you paying attention?" Bahadir demanded. Calliope turned her eye to the charging beasts and nodded her head. Her mind made a few calculations, surprisingly well served by years of plotting bearings and winds.

"This way!" she called and darted to the left, running at an angle between the orcs and the beastmen. Both groups altered their own charges to follow the movement, kicking up clouds of dust as hooves and massive feet shook the sands. Calliope slowed her run slightly as the angles changed. Bahadir suddenly grinned as he saw her scheme. The orcs crashed into the charging beastmen at a diagonal angle, axes chopping down with brutal sounds of steel on meat which was heard even over the crowd. Several beastmen turned and struck at the orcs, impaling one on a rusty spear. The charge descended into mayhem as the factions impacted each other. Calliope had a moment to feel greatful that her captors were more interested in spectacle than simply having them killed. Beastmen or Orcs alone might easily have overwhelmed them, but with both groups chopping each other into meat, they might have a chance.

"Brace yourself!" Calliope yelled as the press of bodies naturally shoved the edge of the melee towards them. There was no way to completely avoid the fray, they could only hope to even the odds. A pair of gors came rushing towards them braying and stinking with fear, urine, and hatred in equal parts. Calliope parried a spear point and thrust into the side of the beast, spraying blood and a slithering trail of entrails.

"Try to keep track of who is winning!" Calliope shouted.

"Then what?" Bahadir called as he sidestepped and brained another beastman.

"Kill whoever is winning, try to keep the numbers even!"

The Enemy Beyond: Warhammer 40,000 Inquisitor RP

Hadrian was crumpled at the back of the room his power sword fizzling as it melted the fibrous carpet that it lay upon. Coils of smoke trailed upwards and stung my nostrils, somehow overpowering the stench of dead men, food, and the actinic salt smell of the Warp. I am not a telekine by training or inclination and I lack finesse. Hadrian had been hurled down the length of the mess tables, smashed the ornate chair at the head, and shattered a wooden and plastec bar which was currently leaking alcohol from a dozen broken bottles.

Most of the officers who had been using the mess were already dead. Some we had killed during our frantic flight, others when the Chaos Marine had punched through the ceiling. A few still whimpered or cowered in corners, overwhelmed by the psychic backwash or the simple trauma of seeing the Archenemy of Mankind. They didn’t have long to suffer. Clara moved along the line, putting a las round into the brain case of each officer living or dead. I wasn’t sure if that was strategic or simply a different way of dealing with the trauma, either way I didn’t try to stop her.

“Hadrian!” I gasped leaning down and touching his forehead to feel his thready pulse. He was alive, though I suspected he had suffered a serious concussion when he had crashed into the wall. I was no medicae but I knew he was going to need medical attention and soon.

“Emma!” I turned to see Clara staring at the body of the chaos marine. The baroque armor seemed to be running as though the metal itself were molten. The golden filigree forming grotesque tendrils that reached out for the severed section like the fingers of a dying man. Where the tendrils slid over the carpet the fibers warped and changed, becoming tiny fingerlike tentacles that beat at the armor like cilia. For a horrifying moment I thought that the marine was going to knit himself back together before, with a chillingly organic shudder the tendrils went slack and the luster went out of them. I watched in abject fascination as the armor seemed to darken, not all at once but in mottling that almost seemed to form. I wrenched my eyes away from the dissolution before the warp sigils that seemed to drip from the shattered power armor could ensnare my mind. I cast a quick glance at Clara but she was already backing away and making the half aquila with the hand not holding her las carbine.

“The Emperor Protects,” she hissed fervently. I was less certain but this was hardly the time for a theological debate. Alarm claxons were hooting out in the hall way and probably throughout the entire ship and I could hear confused shouting and the thump of boots coming from somewhere.

“Clara, grab Hadrian,” I instructed then reached out with my will. The long table flexed and lifted up to the hole in the roof like a grasping hand, shedding bloodied table cloth, bodies and ruined food in a fragrant shower. A wave of weakness swept through me and the tiny carpet tentacles gave up their quest for the armor and stretched out in a vain effort to reach me. I was too tired for this, but there was no option other than to go forward. Plucking a naval revolver from the holster of one of the dead officers I clambered up the table back into the chambers which had belonged to the late an unlamented Inquisitor Vorn.

The stink of death was heavy on the air by then. Clara clambered up behind me dragging Hadrian up the improvised ramp. Vorn and his companions lay where we had left them, distinguished only by spreading pools of blood and the inhuman red footprints the departed traitor marine had left. I hurried back into what I rightly presumed was Vorn’s private quarters. It didn’t look like the lair of some great heretic. There were bookshelves, art and archeotech from several Imperial traditions, even a small shrine to Him on Earth. Not for the first time I wondered how deep Vorn’s insanity had gone. Had he really believed he was a loyal servant of the Emperor while he hosted a traitor Astartes on his ship?

“Emmaline, what is the plan?” Clara demanded as she lay Hadrian down by the door. He was murmuring to himself, though whether with any cognisance of his surroundings or merely in delirium there was no time to ascertain. I pulled a large duffle bag from a nearby couch and upended it, scattering weapons and clothing all about, then went over to Vorn’s desk and began piling the contents into the canvas sack. There were data slates, books, scrolls and even several small stone tablets marked with odd xenos derived symbols.

“We don’t have time for this,” Clara called as I finished my improvised looting.

“We will never get another chance!” I replied.

“You are both right,” a silky voice came from the door. To my horror the previously empty portal had manifested the Aldarei warrior we had encountered earlier. His head was bare but the rest of him was encased in dark glossy armor that seemed entirely composed of blades and hooks. I idly wondered how he managed to avoid getting snagged on everything he passed but the thought was banished as he raised a long thin rifle to aim at me. Clara opened up on full auto, raining las bolts on the xenos in a single extended fusilade. It moved so fast. It didn’t blur, it just seemed to phase in and out of existence. I had a confused recollection of a lasbolt striking its weapon and then a moment later it held two long knives in it’s hands. Rather belatedly I brought up my own heavy pistol and began to unload cacking out the hard rounds in the rapid crack-crack-crack of panic fire. When the hammer clicked on an empty chamber the Aldaeri was still standing there, looking for all the world as though he hadn’t just waded through a storm of gunfire.
“Now it is time to play Mon-keigh,” it purred.

“You want to play?” Clara demanded, “catch.” She threw a grenade at the creature. I saw its lips curve as it lazily reached out and plucked the bomb from the air. With a flick of it’s wrist it tossed the grenade back. Or it tried to. A look of shock came across its face as it finished the throwing gesture only to find the bomb had adhered to its jointed gauntlet. I had just enough time to comprehend that Clara had smeared demolition adhesive across the grenade before she threw it before Clara crash tackled me behind the desk. A heartbeat later there was a flash and a tremendous crump of detonation and overpressure. I rolled onto my back and popped my head up in time to see the xenos, horribly burned and blackened tearing at its armor. White smoke and little motes of fire drifted around and the chemical stink stung the back of my throat like inhaling embers. Clara slapped her last powercell into her carbine and worked the charging handle back and forth with what seemed to me like infinite effort but the Aldaeri had already vanished, fleeing blindly as hundreds of flecks of phosphorus burned into its body. I know it is an article of faith that burning Xenos always smells sweet but on this point too I will have to deviate from doctrine.

The Even Chance crashed out of the Immaterium on the back of the psychic spike that left its Navigator unconscious. The Caledonia followed it a few minutes later, trailing out of warp with its ancient engines burning at full output. Lance fire and macrocannon batteries opened up, pouring fire into the traders engines. The Even Chance returned fire, but slowly, the sudden drop from the warp had wrought havoc aboard the ship, striking many crew insensible. The problem was further compounded by the fact that we had managed to kill most of the senior officers during our frantic battle in the mess haul. So it was that an hour later the Caledonia’s boarding party was able to fight it’s way to us and pull us back to our own ship.

Cogs in the Wheel: WoT RP

Zoya reached out a hand and shook on the deal. Davin arched an eyebrow out her demonstrating that he knew that it was only her word which carried weight and not a handshake. For much of the White Tower's existence there had been no Oaths, they had been adopted to help calm the fears of the populace but it seemed to many Aes Sedai that they did more harm than good.

"I swear that I will treat and pay you fairly," Zoya amplified and was annoyed to see a look of relief cross the Thieftakers face.

"Excellent, well now that you are paying, what is the first order of business?"

____________

The rain had stopped as they exited the wreck of the ancient ship though the sky skill scudded with grey cloud. They were on a large tidal plain, shallow pools of water intercut with deeper channels and raised sandbanks. Zoya immediately saw that Davain had used driftwood to construct simple fish weirs in the deeper streams. Several silvery forms were trapped within by the ebbing tide. The Thieftaker took a long sharp stick and began neatly spearing them. Zoya let her eyes track over the salt flat. Judging from the pale greenery the tidal flat gave way to salt marsh a mile or so from the beach. From what the maps said, there was little of value and few settlements in this desolate region.

"Too bad we dont have anyway to ..." Davian began. The fish seemed to come apart into strips, and then the strips shriveled as the moisture was sucked from the fillets. "Dry them," He concluded. Davian wrapped the dried fish in some parchment from his pack and tucked it away.

"Well you saw the vision from the Saddle Light," Zoya suggested, "any idea which way we should head?"

Tricksters and Theives: A Warhammer RP

Chapter 3

The smell of Altdorf hit them before the saw it. The smell thousands wood and coal fires, the smell of sweat, the smell of spices and timber, the smell of live stock, grain, old fruit, mud, horses, cooking meat, baking bread, the tang of hot metal, the reek of tanners yards, the fishy odor of the waterfront and docks, all underlaid with the smell of hundreds of thousands of humans and their waste gathered together. The smell of Altdorf. The smell of Home.

Emmaline reigned in her horse as the reached the top of Cemetery Hill, a small knoll on the east of the city where the road rose up to give a view of the great Imperial metropolis. The great ribbon of the Stir curved away in both directions, touching the city in an intricate series of docks, jetties and quays. Hundreds of ships were docked or underway, flying the flags of dozens of nations from the insolent ensign of Marienburg to the silken standard of far off Uluthan. Many were heading east, under sail or banks of oars, carrying troops or supplies towards the Siege at Nuln. Millitary aid between provinces was a matter of politics in the Empire, but a direct threat to Nuln and its vast gunpowder works and armament factories ensured a swift and savage response. Not all of the vessels would be millitary of course, many a merchant would seek to make a fortune supplying the troops that were already rushing west, or by being the first to bring food and material to a great city which was now starved of both.

Beyond the docks the city rose in levels of increasing opulence, from the waterfront tenement and firetraps up through the prosperous streets of Market Lane and the Crofter Square. Emmaline though she could make out a flash of color that marked the Street of a Thousand Taverns, her old haunt when she had lived here. Beyond that were the towers of the College of Magic and the mighty spire of the Grand Cathedral, glowering at each other in eternal unease. Beyond that lay the Imperial Palace, or more accurately palaces, where the great and good ruled the Empire of Man and Riekland with tenacity which always outweighed its effectiveness. These final vistas were hazy and indistinct, the smoke of cook fires and furnaces wafting from innumerable chimneys to stain the crisp fall air.

"Welcome to the greatest city in the world," Emmaline declared as she looked out over the vista.

"It stinks," Neil observed, wrinkling his nose.

"Doesn't it though?" Emmaline said happily and touched her heels to the flank of her horse to get it moving again. She neither knew nor liked horses, but from comments she had received during the journey it seemed that both of their steeds were of good quality. Emmaline suspected that several minor nobles had vanished on Hexenaucht, adding to the grim legends for the wrong reasons. The horses trotted down through the traffic, farm wives on their way to market, peddlers driving wagons of goods, even the occasional Imperial messenger dashing past on a fast horse. They might soon have to sell the beasts, as what little coin they had scrapped together was nearly exhausted, the only thing of value that remained to them was the Wyrdstones that had stolen in Nuln. Emmaline was confident they could sell them, but it would take time and subtly to do so safely. The needed money badly and in Altdorf, so close the Colleges, there was no hope of passing false coins shimmed up with a spell.

"We need to find somewhere to stay," she told Neil, "and I doubt there are any towers free."

Tricksters and Theives: A Warhammer RP

Emmaline glared at the misfiring pistol in disgust. The terror still gripped her but action felt better than cowering in fear. Lightning stabbed down in angry flashes, all but blinding them. Leaves exploded upwards from the fallen tree, blazing and burning like incendiary snow. Howling wind whipped the burning leaves around them, embers stinging like insects. The lightning was definitely coming faster now, rolling booms reflecting through the bowl, dazzling blast lighting the smoke in flashes of gold and purple.

A cultist stumbled out of the smoke, an elegant sword raised. Neil chopped down with his blade, the cultist's eyes widened as his torso fell away in two separate pieces, the enchantment laid on the blade not entirely spent. Emmaline stumbled onwards, disoriented by the calamity unfolding around her. She found herself within the circle of the standing stones. Disturbingly the air was clear here, as though a great funnel of wind had cleared it, spiraling upwards like the base of a tornado. Strange stars glittered in the sky above, somehow malevolent and hostile.

The still air stank of blood and burned spices. The source of the first was obvious. Brandt and Gert lay lashed to the stone, bodies daubed with blood in runes that made Emmaline queasy to look at. Jagged slashes tore their throats, emptying their life blood over the stone and into channels cut into the dirt. The hooded figure they had seen from afar stood over Johann, bloody knife raised, an ugly liquid chant spilling from it's lips. Emmaline had the sudden chilling impression that the chanter was speaking to the storm, and the even more chilling realization that the storm was listening, gaping mouths and vast eyes forming in suggestion in the walls of smoke. Johann met her eyes, his face frozen in a rictus of blind terror. Emmaline threw the useless figure at the magister with all her might. The weapon turned awkwardly in the air and the figure turned to face Emmaline. The headdress was a helmet mounted with the skull of some great elk, or perhaps a beastman. Ugly runes had been caved into the ivory and a veil of chainmail, glass beads, and human teeth, hung over the magisters faces. Only the eyes were visible, wide and human, and completely insane. It slashed down with the knife, tearing Johann's throat open and ending his scream in a wet gurgle. The storm boomed as the ritual neared its climax.

"Fuck!!!" Emmaline screamed in very unheroic fashion, and then shouted the words to a short cantrip. THe pistol in the Magister's hand pulsed a gentle gold, and the other spell caster began to laugh in triumph, great tendrils of smoke and congealed rain reaching out of the hellish wall of smoke and burning leaves. Lightning snapped down from the sky, striking the pistol Emmaline had galvanized. The pistol, the Magister's arm, and a fair portion of their shoulder exploded in a spray of bones, hot metal, and burning sizzling blood mist. An arcane backlash hurled Emmaline off her feet, pitching her back into the swirling confusion of smoke and chaos.

Death and Desire: A Warhammer Fantasy RP

"Fantastic," Calliope sighed, sinking back against the stone wall. Her body ached prodigiously from the battering it had taken in the arena. Her wrists were stiff and her hips pulsed with flashes of pain that throbbed in time with her heart. There was a commotion as several palace servants bustled in to the room, four of them held short swords and one of them had an ornate bell mouthed firearm inlaid with brass traceries. Calliope had no doubt that it was effective for all it's garish ostentation. A pair of servants carried a tray of fresh fruit and cold meat. The gunmen gestured them back from the bars and the door was unlatched so that the food could be set inside. Calliope considered the feasibility of a rush, but charging a door covered by a coach gun was suicide.

"Now we are talking," Calliope sighed, picking up a quince and biting into into it, spitting the rind through the bars at the retreating servants. She was gratified to see them flinch, despite the barriers between them.

"Yes, we are talking," came a voice from the darkness. Azim Abbasi stepped from the shadows, the light glittering from the rings he wore on every finger. Calliope threw the quince at him, the fruit bouncing from his right eye and sending him staggering backwards. One of the servants struck at her with the hilt of his sword, but Calliope danced back from the bars to avoid the blow.

"Charming," Azim said with a half snarl, wiping juice from his cheek. "Shame you didn't have the decency to die quietly. It would have been so much easier to pay one of the slaves to strangle you. Can't do that now given the impression the pair of you made."

"Sorry to disappoint," Calliope replied, pulling the tray back into the cell out of reach of the servants.

"I can yet be made whole," the Vizier replied, his oily smirk returning as he wiped away juice with a handkerchief.

"The pair of you have just become the stars of this little show and so I cannot have you simply killed, what I can do is set up a series of bouts featuring the pair of you, something sure to kill the pair of you."

Tricksters and Theives: A Warhammer RP

Emmaline was certain that even the cannons on the walls of Nuln couldn't have been louder than the thump of her heart. It seemed to leap in her chest like a wild animal thrust into a sack to be drowned. It wasn't like she had never been scared before, facing the Skaven had been no picnic, but the existential helplessness was almost paralyzing. With supreme effort of will she managed to put one foot in front of the other, forcing herself to move and not simply stand waiting for whatever horrors were out there to drag her off. After the first step the second was a little easier, and the third easier still.

"We need to find the road," Emmaline forced herself to whisper, an obvious point but speaking at all seemed to help. Unfortunately, the parlous situation was growing worse. Through the gaps in the trees the green light of Morsliebb was waning, not because the moon was setting, but because thunderheads were beginning to gather and obscure the moons. As the clouds veiled the heavens the wood grew darker and more ominionus, as impossible as that seemed in the later case. Within a quarter hour it had become so dark that Emmaline could only make out a few feet in any direction, the world narrowing to a tangled snarl of old trees, hanging vines, and clawing bushes. Every few seconds lightning would crack across the sky, long arching discharges that flowed from one side of the night to the other with liquid malevolence. The loamy smell of leaf mold and old timber took on a slightly better taste from the electrics overhead.

"We can't see a damned thing," Neil complained as he waited for another burst of lighting to grant them a few moments of illumination, "can you conjure a light."

"I could," Emmaline admitted uneasily, "but anything for miles away would see it in this murk." Neil nodded reluctantly and glanced to the sky. The wind was picking up, rustling the trees above in a sibilant hiss. If there was rain falling, it was whisked away to vapor on he wind before it reached thee canopy. The rush of wind gave the impression of movement in all directions and Emmaline once again had to fight to keep moving, imagining at any moment the spear of a beast man or the slavering jaws of some horror for which there were no names.

"I... I think I see some light," Neil said after a few moments of peering into the gloom. Emmaline followed his gaze and saw what he meant, a smudge of lighter sky.

"Maybe the Inn?" Emmaline thought/prayed. Certainly on Hexennacht every light would be blazing to banish the unwholesome darkness.

"It is our only chance," Neil said with demoralizing finality. Emmaline nodded, privately promising for the thousandth time, that if she got out of this alive she really would put some more effort into her arcane studies.

Emmaline followed Neil towards the distant light. The ground slowly rose and they picked their way around large rocks, and vast thickets of blackberries so tangled with thorns that they had no choice but to skirt them. The light grew steadily brighter as the minutes passed and the climbed the hill. Rain slashed down in irregular burst, spattering them like ice chips for a few seconds before passing on. Emmaline cast glances back over her shoulder every time there was a break in the trees, but even with the elevation the night as to dark to make out out distant villages. On rare occasions Morsliebb would emerge from behind the clouds, casting its odd green radiance down on them. Perversely this was more disorienting than the darkness as the rain spattered vegetation would seem to glow and pulse as though blighted with some strange pox. Neil and Emmaline both hunkered down at such times, fearful of the light, and of the cursed moon itself.

"I don't remember seeing any hills from the road when we came in," Emmaline said as they neared the top of the ridge. Neil paused for a second, casting his mind back.

"I... I don't either but who knows how far we have come," he pointed out reasonably. The thunder pealed overhead drowning out conversation for a moment. Then, suddenly they were atop the hill and looking down into a rocky bowl between eight small hills. The hills themselves were tree covered, though the woods thinned out rapid as one went down into the bowl and the rocks grew more numerous. Runnels of water from the cloud bursts ran down into a larger stream which pooled before gurgling off to the south.

In the center of the bowl they saw the coach. It stood beside a ring of eight stone monoliths, simple upthrusts of granite, though oddly smooth as though polished by unskilled hands. Torches had been thrust into the ground around them and eight bonfires blazed towards the heavens. Around the fires Emmaline could make out figures dancing in counter rotating circles. Some were dressed in finery, others almost nude, some even seemed to be wearing the raw and bloody pelts of animals. In the center of the stone ring was a large stone that looked different from the rest, it glowed with reflected firelight, like quartz or some other crystal. Emmaline queasily realized that this was the light they had been seeing. Infront of the glowing stone prisoners were staked to ground and tied with hawsers around their neck. A figure in a strange headdress was moving between them, dabbing their foreheads with symbols from a bowl which Emmaline hoped was not blood. Thunder crashed overhead, booming and refracting in antiphonal chorus within the hollow. Lightning, white and terrible lanced down and struck one of the monoliths, the bright light leaving a purple after image across Emmaline's vision. It blasted a divot from the top, shards of sharp stone scything down a pair of worshipers. Their companions didn't slow in their dances, stepping on the bodies and howling with laughter.

"We need to get out of here," Emmaline whispered, feeling it was the most unnecessary statement she had ever uttered. Neil was peering at the scene below and nodding slowly. He pointed and she followed his outstretched arm. Beyond the coach on the other side of the bowl was a trail, beside which were staked a half dozen horses. The beasts were neighing and pawing at the earth, large eyes rolling in panic.

"It might be out best bet," he whispered.

Death and Desire: A Warhammer Fantasy RP

All was Dust gusted around Calliope's feet like mist as the chaos whirled around her like fog on a moor. Maybe not quite like that, no moorland ever shook like the floor of the arena as the massive Rhinoxes charged and stamped. She kept clear of the action as best she could, her eyes darting around the arena as she tried to measure it from the vantage point of a slave, survival was important, but if she wanted to survive more than a few days she needed information.

"Allah have merc...aieeee!" a trembling slave screamed as an arrow from one of the howdahs caught him in the belly, he dropped his sword and fell to the ground, black blood jetting between dirty fingers. Calliope put her dagger between her teeth and picked up his sword, it didn't balance quite right with her falchion but needs must when the Daemon's called the tune. It was clear to her that the battle wouldn't last too much longer, the surviving slaves were simply trying to keep out of the way of the rampaging beast, their occasional slashes doing little more than enraging the great herbivores. Calliope turned in a slow circle, catching sight of Bahaadir by his fallen beast.

Calliope lifted her black silk scarf and wrapped it around her face like a highwayman, shielding her already parched throat from the dust. One of the rhinoxes crashed into a slave, the sheer force of the impact sending the man flying into the wall of the arena with a wet crash of cracking bone. One of his companions struck the beast across the head, but the thick bony horn deflected the blow and the great beast swung with impressive speed to catch the man in its jaws. The great flat teeth, designed for grinding tough tundra grasses, rasped together in a spray of blood and splintering ribs. Calliope tucked her sword under her arm, pulled the knife from between her teeth and hurled it at the rhinox. Poorly weighted it tumbled awkwardly and struck the blood mad beast in the eye with the blunt hilt. The creature roared in pain, locked calliope in its rolling black eyes, and charged. She bolted, racing across the arena to the fallen animal.

Bahadir was shouting something at her, but there was no time now to second guess herself, she reached the fallen Rhinox and jumped onto its head, running up the bony plates of its neck with the shore footedness of a deep water sailor. The second beast shied at the last minute, unwilling and unable to trample a pack mate, its great bulk turning side on like a ship caught in stays. Calliope leaped into the air a moment before the massive beast sideswiped its fallen comrade. She hit the side of the howdah, stabbing one sword down into the wood to anchor herself. Two archers still clung to their posts, eyes wide with terror. One of them grabbed for Calliope in an instinctive attempt to dislodge her. She caught his wrist and yanked, tearing him from his seat using the momentum to lift herself up over the lip of the platform even as he tumbled to the dusty floor below. The second slave had dropped his bow and came at her with a curved knife. Calliope knocked his wrist aside but she hadn't yet had time to find her balance, the slave's rush smashed her back against the edge of the howdah and sent her sword spinning out of her grip. He screamed in her face, inarticulate and halitotic as he tried to drive his knife into her neck. Calliope snapped her head forward and smashed his nose to a pulp with her forehead. The slave spat blood and staggered back and Calliope tried to repeat her trick of a moment before and pitch him to his death. More skillful, or luckier, this one managed to grab her leg as he fell and she felt her bones and tendons strain as she caught the side of the howdah, the slave clinging onto her for dear life. The rhinox was wild now, mad with pain and charging across the arena. Calliope could catch only glimpses of the screaming crowd as her world spun drunkenly. She twisted and kicked with her free leg, feeling teeth break as the despairing slave let go and fell, vanishing beneath the feet of the great beast.

"Shyalla's tits," she gasped as she pulled herself back into the howdah, holding on for dear life. The bow was gone, flung aside during the fracas. She pulled her sword free and glanced around, then slashed at the first of two ropes that secured the platform. The tough hemp took two strokes and then parted, the weight of it sliding drunkenly to the side. The rhinox bellowed in fury and went into a paroxysm of bucking and stamping as it wheeled drunkenly under the weight of several hundred pounds of wood and leather. Calliope braced herself and gripped her sword with both hands. The second rhinox filled her view as the two out of control creatures rushed towards each other in an inevitable collision that woke a gasp from the crowd audible even over the screaming. Calliope drove her blade down into the beasts spine with all her might, the great beast spasmed as its back legs stopped responding and collapsed, its hind quarters skidding in a tidal wave of dust and pebbles as it crashed into its companion, its four horns ripping a great rent into the flank as thousands of pounds of meat, muscle and bone, collided with a sound like two tidal waves hitting. Calliope was thrown into the air, her sword ripped from her hands. She turned drunkenly her vision flashing with snatches of sky, crowd, and dust filled arena. She tried to curl herself into a ball to minimize the inevitable broken bones and squeezed her eyes shut. Strong arms grabbed her from the air as Bahadir, against all odds, managed to catch her. It wasn't clean, she had too much momentum and she drove him to the ground, but it traded a falls worth of broken bones for an equivalence of scrapes and bruises as they sprawled out in the dust.

The crowd was screaming, some in outrage and some in delight. The surviving slaves, less than half a dozen, were closing in on the striken animals, one paralyzed and the other on its side, thick blood gouting from the great gash torn in its side. The slaves drove in, dealing crippling blows to tendon and neck as they strove to kill the great beasts.

"I guess," Calliope gasped, "it wont just be goat on the menu tonight."

At The Edge of The World

The Occult Bastion. Sail halfway around the world, use an assumed name, bury me in a cave on the Moon, and they would still find me and ask for a favor. I tucked the sigil away and sat down on the bed, gazing out over the city and the distant jungle on the hills beyond. The Bastion is a quasi-underground guild which offers magical training to the magically gifted, provided they have money, or preferably - are willing to go into debt. By a combination of political chicanery, protection rackets and open threats they close off all but a very few institutes of arcane instruction. Then they use their ‘debts’ to compel half the spell casters in the world to do their dirty work when it suits their purposes.

In my experience the Bastion is ninety percent made up of cruel blowhards and swaggering braggarts. The problem is that the other ten percent are terrifying spell casters, spell blades, and arcane killers, which means they can't just be ignored. Still this was the end of the world, it seemed unlikely that their operatives here were of the highest order. I wondered if they actually wanted something, or if they were just throwing their weight around. I supposed I would find out.

Further ponderings were interrupted as I saw Beren crossing the flagstone street below and entering the inn. I let out a sigh of relief to see him fine after his frantic pursuit of whatever had been snooping in our room. I heard his footsteps coming down the hall and instinctively prepared, laying back on the bed and shaking out my hair before propping my head up on my palm.

“It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen… and the ale isn’t bad either,” I joked, my eyes wide with honest astonishment that he had managed to find such a prize in this malarial jungle. I beckoned him over towards the bed with a crooked finger and a languid smile.

“I take it the strange news is about our visitor?”

Death and Desire: A Warhammer Fantasy RP

The boom of the announcer reverberated though the tunnels like distant surf. Whatever words were being said were lost in the roar of the crowd and the refractory echoes of the passageways beneath the arena. Calliope muttered a prayer to Mannan, not for mercy, the Sea God never granted that, but that she might live long enough to take revenge on the every growing list of people who had wronged her. A dozen slaves had been herded into the assembly area, then a bucket of rusted weapons was upended before them. A dwarf was arguing loudly with the overseers and gesturing at Bahadir but whatever he wanted, the overseers were unmoved by his position. Calliope picked up a curved tulwar and a short dagger. Both were rusted and notched with hard use.

"Do you know how to use those? Bahadir asked. Calliope hefted the weapons and tried to find the balance.

"To be honest, I'd be happier if they gave me a dozen cannon, but I suppose I will have to make do," she replied.

"Listen up scum!" One of the overseer's, a fat man with tiny piggish eyes, bellowed as he stalked back and forth with a curved whip in his hands.

"This is a group bout, work together and you may live," he leered, his teeth blackened where they weren't stained red with the disgusting bettlenut this Aryabs chewed.

"Or not of course," he snickered, then heaved on a lever. A heavy portcullis rose on the squeal of ungreased gears and the slaves moved forward up the tunnel. Overseers followed them with spears, ready to prod the laggards into compliance.

___

The light as they exited the tunnels was shocking. Th Araybian sun burned down, reflecting of the adobe of the arena and the blood stained sands of the fighting pit. All around them the excited crowd bayed for blood. Some threw food and trash at them, others howled encouragement for the sake of bets they were placing. Calliope blinked against the bright sun and glared up at the Sultan's box. The sun was too close to that angle to allow her to see more than shadows, but she could imagine the vizier smirking down at her. The announcer roared on, and then with a brazen flurry of trumpets the portcullis on the opposite side of the arena lifted. There was a moment of silence and then three great beasts burst from the shadows trumpeting primal war cries that almost eclipsed the blood thirsty roar of the crowd.

"Shyalla's tits, they are the size of sloops," Calliope gasped as the beasts charged towards, them literally bouncing sand from the floor of the arena. They were ninefeet to the shoulder and each must have weighed as much as a steam tank. They were curvered in thick curled fur and bore four horns on their massive slavering heads. Even from this range Calliope could see great gouts of saliva spurting from between their thumb length teeth. Atop the monstrous creatures, Rhinoxes if the bestiaries in her fathers library hadn't lied, were curious contraptions, half saddles, half howdahs, in which sat men with short bows. They were making no effort at archery however, as the beasts seemed as enraged at their presence as that of the other gladiators, bucking and stamping to try to dislodge their unwanted riders.

"Scatter!" Calliope shouted, but in Reikspiel as she and Bahadir dashed sideways. She heard the word translated into the Arabyian tongue as the rest of the slaves tired to sprint out of the way. One man, too shocked or scared to move, simply stood still, a rusted spear falling from his limp hand. The lead Rhinox caught him with a sweep of its head, tossing him into the air with a spray of blood and a sound of breaking bone audible even over the thunderous pounding of their feet. By accident or design the broken body flew close enough to another of the beasts that it caught the man in its jaws, shaking its head back and forth like a hound worrying meat. Blood and limbs flew off in alternating directions before the beast spat the mutilated wreck of the corpse against the wall with a wet slap that slid slowly down the adobe. The crowd roared with approval.