STATUS:
"You're me from the future, and you came back to the past to keep me from suffering like you did?" asks my childhood self. "Something like that," I reply as I load the gun.
5 days ago
Current
"You're me from the future, and you came back to the past to keep me from suffering like you did?" asks my childhood self. "Something like that," I reply as I load the gun.
5
likes
6 days ago
That bot left a number and email. Someone should cast "Unending Newsletters" for them.
2
likes
28 days ago
Writing horror is super difficult because it requires telling a story while shutting up at the same time. It's fear of the UNKNOWN, not fear of the well-written descriptions.
9
likes
2 mos ago
Say "thanks," when they compliment you and smile. Watch more of what's going on around you instead of staying inside your head. If eye contact's hard, stare at her forehead.
1
like
2 mos ago
@ColdAtlus: Cheems.
1
like
Bio
On CST time, United States. Typically busy most of the week and do most posting/replying on weekends.
I suppose just assume that she left the camp at relatively the same time as most of the other Runts, but that the spot she chose for prayer was relatively safer than the paths the rest of the players chose to follow (as of yet, there aren't a lot of "landmarks" discovered within the forest, as no one's gone into the "depths" of it so far). From there you could assume that in the time it took most of the others to "Leave Camp > Wander Around > Have their First Fight > Kill/Eat it" she instead spent that time praying, maybe preparing a trap or attempting to craft something, whatever you want to do before her first random encounter rolls.
Welp, here she be. Instead of questionable science lizard, I instead went with ~religion~ this time.
Hopefully this is acceptable. I left it pretty open ended with the last bit, but I figured it'd make most sense if while she was around with the others she just went off and decided to pray.
Name: Sarvok Formerly, Sarena
Current Stats: Level: 1 | Form: Orc Runt | Tier: 2
Current Skills:
Ingestion - After consuming a required amount of biomass from a particular Creature, 1 of that Creature's Skills can be copied at its lowest Rank.
Isekai Skill - Not Yet Chosen
Empty Skill Slot
Empty Skill Slot
Equipment and Inventory:
Swaddling Pelts - Equip, Clothes - Old animal skins used to keep an Orc baby warm as they sleep. Once the Runt is old enough to start hunting, these are usually just enough to cover the parts that need the most covering.
Wooden Stick - Equip, Weapon/Tool, Material Component - A wooden stick. From a tree. That's...that's all there is to it. Can be thrown.
Sharp Rock - Equip, Weapon/Tool, Material Component - A rock with a slightly sharp edge. Useful as a primitive knife or chisel. Can be thrown.
True Age:
38 years, six months
Past Life:
Sarena was born and raised in a small, rural town in the midwest of the united states. Her upbringing otherwise is fairly unremarkable. A loving, if somewhat large family with five brothers and sisters with her being the oldest. A stable environment where her father was a pastor and her mother spent time working as an accountant for a large business firm. The only perhaps, huge impact her early life had on her was her heavy involvmenet in religion.
She eagerly and quickly took to religious teachings that her father gave to her, beginning to believe and worship God from a young age. At school, she also took quite well to most academics in her field, particularly math thanks to her mother and as the years of her early life and highschool passed her by, she'd graduate with flying colors and head off to university to study Theology, History, and archaeology.
Yet, even though she had a life many would be envious of, she could not deny it.
Happiness was not something she believed she ever felt. Contentment? Certainly. But there was something...missing. She could laugh at things she found funny, cry at things she thought was sad. Even so though, there was a deep feeling that something was missing. She had spent much of her praying, thinking, contemplating, trying to find an answer for what exactly she felt that was different.
It wasn't until the middle of her freshman year at college did she find the answer where she was attending a class about religion in ancient Egypt. For all her love and belief in religion and the Lord God, she had never felt as though others were genuine in their beliefs. Hypocrites. Self righteous people who merely used religion for personal gains.
And when she realized this, at first she was afraid. Afraid of the sort of things that it made her feel. Want to do. God said to love all, but then why did those that practice it reject such ideals? The bible was sometimes contradictory in its statements but that was only without looking at it through a context of the time it was written and those who wrote it.
After a night of prayer, she found her answer.
She would become a teacher.
She headed back to her home town after switching degrees, where two things would happen. One, she became a teacher at the highschool. Two, her father would be diagnosed with cancer. Such an ugly thing, cancer wasn't it? But it was, if nothing else an opportunity. The church would need a new pastor, and though it would be unconventional for a woman to do it...well, for as much as they talked about religion corruption, bribes, and a little pushing could easily make it happen.
Of course, ultimately the decision by the Pastoral Committee was controversial but it happened regardless and for the next few years she privately tutored students at the church, gaining something of a reputation for being able to take troubled youths and reforming them through education, religious teaching, and ultimately understanding.
Of course, humans could not become righteous and good without hardship and the people in her care would never speak.
It was one of these students that would both be the end of her life.
He was a troubled kid. Parents were well off, but typically were quite neglectful and abusive but heavily religious. Bullied by his peers too.
A few cans of accelerant.
A match.
The church went up in flames.
She didn't make it out of there, but neither did he.
She made sure of that.
Beloved religious figure killed in fiery arson by troubled youth
So the headlines read, at least for a few years...but that wouldn't be something she was privy to.
She found herself waking in a new world. Ugly. Grotesque. Demonic. It absolutely sickened her, but she did what she always did when she didn't know the path to take, or was feeling troubled. She sneaked away from the rest of those that looked like her, found a secluded spot in a forest, and prayed.
New Life: Day 1 -> Orc Runt
Looks good to go! I can't wait to see her start a CRUSADE! Pick ONE skill!
...
*The Divine Spirit is oddly quiet. There is a faraway look in her eyes.*
...We all live our life as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.
I hope that your Faith is well placed.
Summon Contract - Rank I - Create a magical contract with an intelligent being to temporarily borrow its power. At Rank I, only Tier 1 Creatures with fitting intelligence can be contracted. Upon Summoning, they will instantly perform 1 Skill/Attack before the Summon period ends. (For instance, a summoned Slime with no Skills would simply lunge at the opponent as if tackling them, and vanish immediately afterward.)
Resist Curse - Rank I - Passively increase one's resistance against magical debuffs, Cursed equipment, and negative status effects from Spells or physical attacks.
Aid - Rank I - Spend MP to heal small wounds and relieve non-threatening ailments.
Holy Bolt - Rank I - A basic elemental bolt of holy magic. Hurl or shoot a magical projectile roughly 30 feet in a straight line. It travels at roughly the same speed you could physically propel a small rock. If the target is undead, aligned with the Curse element, or a member of a True Demon species, it will take increased damage. This spell cannot harm Holy aligned creatures of a higher level than the caster.
Goh chuckled as he listened to Nibiria, before tapping out the ashes from his pipe---away from any of the plants, of course, and grinding them into the dirt with his heel to be sure no stray embers got away.
"You are too modest, young miss." he said as he closed his eyes and felt the breeze whispering through this well tended, peaceful garden. "I think all of those things you mentioned would be of interest. But even if you don't agree with me, I agree with you quite wholeheartedly." He placed the pipe back between his wrinkled lips and folded his arms into his sleeves. "Those little rapscallions are always getting into something---and they've been slacking off in their training. I'm always telling them, they'll get hurt if they don't pay attention!" He laughed again, though at the end he coughed politely into one fist.
Truthfully, his senses could pick up the children's energy even from here---totally fine and traipsing about without a care---but why mention it? He wanted the good doctor to come out among the townsfolk in any case. "Let us return, then!" He stepped aside to let Nibiria pass first, clearly willing to let her lead the way.
Update is up! Hopefully I didn't miss anything this time. Also, I'll try to get around to updating NPC/World tabs and whatnot at some point. @Crusader Lord I think I came up with a workable way to have the Runts sort of move on without Esfir, without straight up rocks-falling anybody or being too egregious with puppeteering.@Unkown58Sorry that I missed your question! Still need info?
@Rune_Alchemist@Timemaster@Kaga Classs@Ashh@Steel Legion Since we've had a few dropouts, I wanted to drop you folks a notice if you still had interest in joining! Given the pace of things has been fairly manageable (a few blips on my part notwithstanding) I'll lift the original "10 players" restriction for you all so anyone who wants to throw a CS out here, feel free! Also, apologies--I think I missed replying to some of you when you originally posted, I didn't mean to be rude!
You’ve Attempted to Craft! Tools Used: Charcoal, Sharp Rock Process: Curing, Tanning Material: Rough Tatzelwurm Hide, Tatzelwurm Fang
… Result: You’ve Crafted: Tatzel Sash! The quality of this item is undetermined.
Consumed: Cooked Tatzelwurm Meat You are Well Fed. Your HP and SP recovery rate is temporarily boosted. Activate [Ingestion: Tatzelwurm] (Y/N)? Approximate Ingestion: 0 > 20% Current Ingestion: Tatzelwurm - 20% Ingestible Skills [Tatzelwurm]:
[Slash]
[???] - Further Progress Required.
[???] - Further Progress Required.
Ingest Skill? OR Continue Biomass Accumulation?
Though the Runts weren’t familiar with all the faces of the Orc tribe, they would know the big players from simple observation during their time as babies—even if those memories now seemed subordinate to those from their human lives. Thus, Ushnekh was able to find his way to the Shaman’s home after his satisfying meal.
The orc camp, nestled between the mountains and cliffs, had a few dwellings in the form of natural caves carved into the rocky walls by time and elements. Usually only the stronger or more renown monsters lived in these, with the rest being forced to make do with tents and teepees—in the case of some poor Grunts, it was the best they could do to make an A-frame shelter with a bed of leaves. But the Shaman enjoyed a rather cozy home by comparison: the cave itself was set at an angle to a curved rock face, and the lean-to had been built as an extension of sorts. It was similar, perhaps, to a covered patio or porch built as an add-on to a human house. A few of the Shaman’s personal belongings and knicknacks could be seen around the corner of the stone entry, but the outer area seemed to serve as her “workshop,” or ritual area…maybe even a lab? It was hard to peg exactly what she was doing here at the moment.
Under the shade of several stretched out pelts between the support posts, Yambagorn stood in front of a small table made from stacking a long, flat rock on top of some timber sections. On this table, a small brazier full of fresh red coals seemed to be roasting a batch of nuts. And below the small, black-iron pot that held the nuts, a blackened wooden tube collected some kind of oil dripping out of the shells and through a series of small holes in the pot. A wooden cutting board held the finely-chopped remains of red-and-green capped mushrooms, and the shaman had just finished cleaning her knife as Ushnekh approached. Without looking at the Runt, she slammed it into one of the nearby wooden posts and let it hang there, quivering.
The female orc turned and retrieved a bowl of something from on top of a wooden barrel with her thin, leather-skinned arms. The wooden bowl seemed to hold some kind of grass or herb, which she began smashing to paste with a stone pestle between her gnarled fingers. Then she looked up at the approaching Ushnekh, her rheumy eyes taking his figure in before she snorted with what might have been amusement.
“So, ya furst hunt be goin’ well, den? Good, good.” She sat down on a seat made from a tree stump, and continued to grind the herbs. “Good ting ya ain’t be hurt, too. Medicine ain’t ready yet.” She gestured with her weak chin and wobbling neck towards another stump. “But ya lookin’ like ya got tings ta ask. Dat’s good, Runt.” She gave Ushnekh a gummy smile, before she snorted and hacked a big loogi between her feet.
Fully Consumed: Slime Membrane Current Ingestion: Slime - 75% All Ingested Skills have been detected! Choose ONE:
[Blunt Damage Resistance]
[Danger Scan]
[Scavenge]
As he chewed, Agar quietly moved through the forest while trying to acclimate his new body to the same stealthy movements he had once been used to. As he left behind the other group of Runts, he now found himself alone…and as he pressed deeper into the trees, the sounds of the forest began to reach him. Indeed, if so many Runts had been stomping around until now, the local wildlife had probably been pretty wary. But now, since he was by himself and making far less noise, he could pick up the ambient signals all around him.
Leaves rustled. Birds called in the distance. Every so often, the trees groaned and sighed under the wind.
And then, something ahead and above of Agar made a sound. He probably wouldn’t have picked up on it if he hadn’t been walking so quietly himself—it was as subtle as a squirrel moving in the branches. But it wasn’t a squirrel. He only caught a glimpse of it, as it passed between a gap in the canopy, but it was enough that he could follow its movement further across two trees.
It was the same kind of snake-cat creature that the other Runt had been carrying, right after they made that big cracking noise in the other part of the forest. So that meant it was what they called a Tatzelwurm. However, this one had its back to Agar even as it lowered itself down from branch to branch. Its gaze was intensely focused on something in front of it…and soon, Agar could see exactly what the Tatzelwurm saw.
A corpse of some unlucky animal lay on the ground, already half consumed by whatever had killed it and now in the stages of decomposition. But right next to that corpse, another creature was hunched, tearing off strips of the rotted flesh with clawed limbs and bringing them to a gobbling mouth. It had leathery, batlike wings folded close to its body, and only two legs/arms/whatever one might call them. Maybe this was what some of the older Orcs had called…A Harpy?
Whatever it was, the Tatzelwurm was intensely focused on the creature. The harpy, for its part, was unaware it was being stalked. The tatzelwurm moved much like Agar now, slow and silent, its coils gripping the lowest branch that hung not too far over the harpy’s backside.
A scavenger, being ambushed, by an ambusher that was being tracked by an orc runt. Now, would Agar try to take his rightful place in the food chain, or…?
You’ve Attempted to Craft! Tools: Sharp Stone Process: Knapping Materials: Tiny Tatzelwurm Bones
…Result: You’ve crafted: Bone Shards x3! Small bones splintered into sharp pieces. Though there’s no hole for a needle or threat, they could be used for sewing. They could also serve as a fragile arrowhead or fishhook, or be thrown like small darts.
Acquired Materials: Petrified Fragment Rotleaves x3 Rotleaf Seedpods x2
…Result: Your attempt failed. Some materials were damaged in the attempt: Cracked Tatzelwum Coilbone x1
As Vola munched on the leftovers of her shared kill with Gren, she also looked around the clearing for anything useful and tried to make use of the materials they already had. Before the group departed for the North Caves, she was able to find the same foul smelling, black colored plant that Esfir had and gather a few of the nasty looking leaves and seedpods from it. But she also found something else:
One particular tree at the edge of the clearing didn’t stand out much from the others, save for one thing. A branch had been broken off its trunk at some point, and seemed to have further broken down into multiple pieces on the ground where it landed. But something about these fragments of wood caught her eye, and when she picked it up, she found it was more like a piece of petrified wood than anything green or dried. Upon looking at the place where the wood had fallen off the original tree, she found that rather than splinters or peeling bark, the place where the branch had broken was also slightly petrified…as if rather than growing new bark over the wound, the parent tree had instead been covered with a layer of rock. The rock also blended almost imperceptibly with the still-growing trunk, its bark the same beige and gray mix of colors and of a similar roughness to plain stone.
But before she could investigate further, one of the other Runts called her. It was time to go.
Gren’s last crafting experiment, making a sling, didn’t work out quite as planned—though the Coilbone was quite flexible, it still had sections of harder bone or cartilage, whatever the stuff was made of, and thus it didn’t quite flex the way a normal rope would. He was able to get it into the shape of a sling well enough, and it even released his first test rock with some decent force. But the knots didn’t hold, and the whipping motion caused something in the fatty joints to pop loudly. The spinal cord might’ve worked better as a sort of chain, only moving along one axis of flexion, rather than a freely twisting rope. Or maybe it was just his clumsy knot tying. Given the damage he’d already incurred, though, it might be risky to try re-tying it. Besides, they had to go… On their way, the group passed another Runt, who seemed to be chewing on something. So far, it looked like very few of them had managed to resist the urge to go ahead and eat their first kills, despite what the Head Warrior had told them about bringing their prey back in one piece. Then again, by the standards of Orc society, they were all still foolhardy youngsters, after all.
Or…if other Runts were like them, reincarnated humans, maybe everyone had the same idea about experimenting to find out what skills they could get?
In any case, though the other Runt had something unusual to say, he didn’t seem intent on joining their group and soon disappeared back into the brush. So they continued to the North Caves. Once they had arrived in the valley, and taken in all its sights, the “leader” of their little group suddenly spoke up.
“There are many of us now. Split into teams, and search thoroughly.” Esfir said in that no-nonsense way of hers. “Remember, we fight from ambush. Retreat if outmatched; if you’re in danger…” She thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Scream loud.” Then, she pointed—not towards the incredibly obvious cave, but towards the rocky walls on the other side of the valley. “I’ll go this way. Don’t want something following behind us as soon as we enter that.”
And then suddenly, each of them received a message.
Quest: Find Something to Eat and Bring it Back Whole
Kill a Creature
Ingested New Creature: Elwet
Learned Skill: Fire Bolt
Explored Areas: Orc Camp, Forest, North Caves
LEVEL UP! Choose ONE:
Increase HP (Health)
Increase MP (Magic)
Increase SP (Stamina)
Gain 1 Skill Rank Point
Quest: Find Something to Eat and Bring it Back Whole
Kill a Creature
Ingested New Creature: Elwet
Learned Skill: Fire Bolt
Explored Areas: Orc Camp, Forest, North Caves
LEVEL UP! Choose ONE:
Increase HP (Health)
Increase MP (Magic)
Increase SP (Stamina)
Gain 1 Skill Rank Point
Quest: Find Something to Eat and Bring it Back Whole
Kill a Creature
Ingested New Creature: Elwet
Learned Skill: Murderous Intent
Explored Areas: Orc Camp, Forest, North Caves
LEVEL UP! Choose ONE:
Increase HP (Health)
Increase MP (Magic)
Increase SP (Stamina)
Gain 1 Skill Rank Point
Quest: Find Something to Eat and Bring it Back Whole
Kill a Creature
Ingested New Creature: Tatzelwurm
Crafted New Items: Short Spear, Spear Thrower
Explored Areas: Orc Camp, Forest, North Caves
LEVEL UP! Choose ONE:
Increase HP (Health)
Increase MP (Magic)
Increase SP (Stamina)
Gain 1 Skill Rank Point
Quest: Find Something to Eat and Bring it Back Whole
Apologies everyone but I've been dealing with some stuff and haven't been able to sit down and think on some updates. I'll get an extra day off because of the 4th so hopefully if I don't get anything done this weekend I can get a midweek update out instead.
Since we've lost a few members at this point I'm also considering getting in touch with some of the people who expressed interest after we'd reached our initial quota. Feel free to show hands if you'd be for or against that or have any other concerns about how the RP's currently going.
Just wanted to let folks know I'm still here, just been dealing with some stuff and haven't been able to get a post out. Apologies @Enkryption if I'm holding you or @Mae up.
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