Mag

“What about you? This cold can be harsh. If you need it…your choice of equipment in this situation was an unfortunate disadvantage.” “How sweet of you!” And then there was laughter – smooth and sweet like springwater, the voice Dove thought suited Selandra best – as they walked and their breaths clouded before their mouths in the air. Cold? It was cold. It was freezing. The walls were no longer slick with moisture, but white with frost and the inquisitive veins of ice. The air was so thin as to be unbreathable. This was a place where death wandered beside the wanderers, and it was lucky that the two dead who were this day’s wandering found his presence pleasing. A mortal, by now, would have died. Soon, perhaps, they would pass the extremities where Death had no life to collect on. Dove figured their altitude to be at least a few miles above sea level, now. A journey from the depths of the earth to the very ends of it... And here Kreigstad was, concerned about a simple human’s need for warmth. It was warmth enough to Selandra’s heart to sustain her; but she needed no such thing. “That kindness of yours is a bit misplaced, isn’t it?” “I certainly hope you offered those children you murdered the same concern for their well-being.” Dove’s voice was wry. “Of course, I think that I will be fine. Besides, it seems as if we’ve almost arrived.” In the vast, impossible distance of the upwards-sloping tunnel, there came a twinkling of light. The journey behind them had already vanished into nothingness, several dozen timeless miles of it. They had never thought to turn back; now, they no longer even considered it. The path lay open, within reach. A rush of energy crawled up her spine, and she recognized that the growing pinprick of light was the beginning of the end. “Just what is this thing capable of…” “Who knows?” Selandra struck up a tuneless whistle as they approached. Ten minutes, perhaps less, remained on this branch of their quest. “Those Gauntlets once held the whole world in their palms. They’ll probably do so again, someday. They’re the sort of thing that can’t resist tampering with – making and remaking – the world to their whim.” The woman was nonchalant as Dove talked about a history that she’d lived through, that she’d helped write with her own hands; of empires, fear, and Zengi. It did not sound like she understood the size of her words; but perhaps it was because she believed in bigger things. And of course, she did. The light source would reveal itself to be a single meter-square panel missing from the floor – not a door, not a dead end. The tunnel continued stretching into oblivion, but the floor had fallen away in a single, clean square. Through the gap, they’d see first the whiteness of a cloud layer stretching some three or four miles below them; then through the gaps, streaks of silver and snowy white and imposing grey, a mountain range viewed from above. They’d see the wedgelike impressions of valleys, green slivers among the stone. They’d see lakes and the beginnings of an ocean that lapped at the rocky coast on the far left. It would seem that they stood at the edge of a hole in the sky, far far in the air. The air was bright, brilliant blue and full of the color of midday.

"Kreigstad Ardese, but you may call me Kreig. Why I am here is to quell this infernal headache since the gauntlet calls to the undead it makes the undeath in me extremely irritable." A wolf, a wolf, an undead wolf! Selandra nodded with a silly grin as the list of traits grew beneath the werewolf’s mouth and memory. Her companion was, perhaps, uncommon; as uncommon as all the things Dove had seen in this world, but his fur was streaked with the dye of the credibly familiar from another era. Liches and undeath had faded from popularity since Zengi had been deposed, and neither did the new face of Terrenus had patience for the oligarchies of men and noble houses that once ruled. In another world, she and a person of his sort might have crossed paths a century ago. And yet here they were, chasing a centuries-lost dream. She did not long for those days to return, but the woman did not deny that they had a good flavor to them. “Well that’s no good.” The mercenary shook her head, shifting the mangled weight of her sword to her other shoulder. “I’d wager that the headache might get a wee bit worse before it gets better. You ready for that?” It was with some false sympathy that she answered, partly because there were less answers given than questions asked. What series of events drives an undead werewolf of the noble clans into the damp earth of a tomb in the derelict of a desecrated Gaian temple? But it was no concern of hers; merely a passing interest, the same with which she might’ve traced the paths of butterflies dancing at the edge of a stream. It was nothing of consequence – only pleasure. The woman took a deep breath. The air had become cold now, and as thin as that which floated among the clouds. They had walked a long way. She felt that their journey was, at least, nearly concluded. "Tell me, your name was lost to me, why are you here? I believe your intention is not that of Nieve's and Martin's, am I correct?" Enigmatic. Selandra put a finger to her lips. “Wouldn’t you like to know, when you’ve made the mistake of forgetting a lady’s name once already?” “The Gauntlet and my family have a bit of peculiar history. It does not belong to us, but I’d like to have it as a keepsake, you know? A souvenir. A reminder of a more tumultuous time.”

And my axe two mechanical arms.

“I suppose this’ll give me a chance to see how you made your pay.” In the still, thin air of the hall, sound seemed to bounce off every wall. It was this brief wall of echoes that stopped her midstep. The mercenary’s hair swayed as she twisted towards the origin of the question. Kriegstad the Wolf was in half-darkness. His edges were beginning to melt into it, his body losing definition in the shadow so comfortably did it envelop him. Dove turned the man over in her thoughts. She had, in her seven centuries walking the face of this earth, never parleyed with the wolf clans. There was never an opportunity. Maybe that had been a mistake. There were too many secrets in this world for one man to know them all; even the most remote of beggars knew something that God did not. Selandra smiled a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes, then stuck out her tongue with a wink. “Maybe. We’ll see, won’t we!” The woman turned on her heels and, with her mangled sword slung over her shoulder, began to march up the upwards hallway, keeping pace with the wolf. Her limbs swung freely, too loose with too much brevity, and her footfalls clattered about the interior of the hollow hallway. Krieg was perhaps more silent than she, but the mercenary didn’t seem to think that secrecy was among the list of priorities here. They could make their sound, because that was all they could do in this twisted, bottomless dimension that the Gauntlet had spooled into the church. If someone could hear them, then it only meant they were not as prisoner as they thought. Caged canaries, or candies in a tin? Selandra rubbed her shoulders and winced. The air was thin, but cold. If only the magma of the chamber still scorched them, if only the sword were still red and molten – humans loved that which they lacked. The stone was featureless and gave nothing away that the duo could keep in their minds. The path remained slanted upwards, and gave no indication of stopping for a long while yet. Straight as an arrow, flying truer and farther than an arrow ever could; the mercenary glanced back down the path and saw an equal amount of distance sinking back into the dark earth. Endless. “Well…guess, uh, we might as well pass the time,” she began awkwardly, pulling her clothing around her more tightly. “Your name was Krieg, right? Uhm…” Dove had grown bored. “So what are you doing here, exactly?”

In terms of plotting: All vampires I named except Arzada and Aisling (temporarily) are pretty much general-use. This is probably most pertinent in the case of @MrDoubleSunday, who might wish to sketch a scene with Aindreas and Fiachna, who are headed your way with a mess of hungry vamps. Tasgall is free game too, but his task isn't too relevant to the scenes at hand.

Womp womp. @sheep is being slow af so we are going to skip him. Next up is... @Al Sa-her

Alan M. MacDowell had spent his life searching for the answers to a certain set of questions. This statement may have been misleading. Like the majority of sentences, it implied much more than it meant. It sounded grandiose, existential. It implied that he tried to answer questions dealing with life, loss, love, the entire human package. It implied that he was undertaking a quest for meaning and truth, theology and philosophy, the price we pay for existence. Yes, that statement was rife with these implications. They are, of course, incorrect. Alan M. MacDowell had done nothing of the sort. These were the kinds of questions that the scientist tried to answer: was it possible to induce a non-destructive phase change in a physical material? Can a material exist in a stable half-angle phase? What effects does this have against materials of other phase states? Alan M. MacDowell was a man of science, you see. The scientist thought sometimes about things like the aforementioned, but generally, took refuge in the comfortable thoughts of his work. He did not like leaving this hollow in the heart that he’d carved for himself. As a result of these tendencies, the girl bothered him greatly. They’d hear his footsteps around the corner. The nervous staccato gave it away, the pause between the tip and the tap that stretched just a tiny bit too long, followed by an occasional boost of speed as if to make up for its hesitation. It’d come to a screeching halt. It’d pace. The sound bounced off the dry, peeling plaster of the walls and they couldn’t tell whether the steps were as hollow, tenebrous as they sounded, or whether that was the acoustics of the compound. The answer lay somewhere in between. They did not, however, even ask the question, because these were the men who did not concern themselves with others. The two guards talked and laughed in their own bubble of existence. When Alan rounded the corner, they were merely unsurprised. “Dr. MacDowell.” A salute. He outranked them, somehow. Not by much; they didn’t move from their seats. He was too familiar to fear. The man shuffled his limbs in response and started moving jerkily down the hall. They resumed their conversation. The slap of cards muted the sickly progression of his footsteps. “Where the hell is she?” We’ve been in this place before. The guards looked up and one of them had a bemused half-frown on his face like he’d heard a joke that was almost funny. The situation didn’t warrant even that. They stared at each other for a while. The scientist looked wild, eyes not quite aligned with his wild gesticulation. His body was asking a question that his mind wasn’t understanding. Instinct defied him. When he realized it finally, his arms deflated and his mouth slid shut. The momentary madness did not leave a favorable inheritance for mindful Alan. Already, he was beginning to regret his words – not for saying them, but for thinking them and forgetting to police his thoughts. The other guard coughed to break the silence. “Uh, sir. You…she’s at the assembly right now. Got taken an hour ago, right?” They looked at each other at the same time, sure that they were giving the right answer but unsure that it was the right one for Alan. “Yeah, right? You…didn’t know that?” “Oh, I see. Thank you.” His face contorted in several different directions as he swallowed the memory. There was little gratitude in his words. Maybe it was stuck in his throat. Maybe gratitude was what was choking the man as he stumbled back out of the prison between two bewildered men and into the fluorescent light of another day inside the compound. Not another day – the light of this day, the day. They poked their heads around the corner at his slumped back. “He really shoulda known. Poor guy.” “Hey, you know those smart types. Head ain’t screwed on right.” They sat down and dealt their cards.

Goodbye, Nica Sero. Dove looked at the man and he looked back at her and she blinked. It was as if the man had vanished. If she did not focus on the blank face, the blood that fringed him painlessly, it was like she was looking at nothing at all. Hope, rage, emotion; he’d let go of the things that made fools of men save acceptance and resignment. It was a husk that was being dragged beneath Heretic’s sickening fingers, a husk that was scorched by the hot metal of the bars and branded by the Unnaturals. Sero had already ceased to be a man. No. The lich felt that this thing that was being dragged away before her was never wholly a man to begin with. She lifted her hand and gave him a wave, a smile, little gifts. Everything would be okay. Not for him, but for the beasts that he did not care for. It was reassurance that when the future came to pass, it would be one he recognized when he looked at the coalesced armies of Unnaturals, the gauntlet-clad figure standing at their forefront, and demon carrying him away. The cage scraped away into the darkness. Dove did not know the man, but the Regent was an important thing to know. She would learn, eventually. “Let’s go then. We might have all the time in the world, but the Inferiors do not.” She beckoned to the five that the Heretic had left her. They were crude shadows in the flames still, cut stiffly from the cloth of a child’s nightmare. As they resolved into the light, they fared little better; but tools were not meant to look beautiful when the trade they plied was ugly. It’d be a bad lie. “It’d be rude to keep them waiting, no?” Dove did not like bad lies. They made the good lies less elegant, and the lich held herself to high standards. “What are the exits from this cavern?” Behind the flames was a jaunt directly to Central Plaza, where the tempers ran as high as the mighty statue in shards among the mud. The one in the back led to the Solvei’s, a sleepy suburban street that was one of the many spokes emanating from the Plaza; to the east was an exit to the blood-bank quarter, and the main west entrance was hidden amongst the high-rises and quaint mansions of the political sector. There were many others to spots all over the city, they told her, but these were the important ones. They made no attempt at neutrality as they spoke. Their voices were full of scathing emotion as they went through the list: the elegant marble of Jean DeCorbin that once stood inspired reverence and indignation, the downcast blood banks, anger, and the offices of the Regent, bloody satisfaction. The Heretic, they knew, would give the Regent and his creator their just deserts. The last statement gave her pause. She pointed at the figure who said it, a modest-looking blond woman clothed in white. “You will be accompanying me. Your name?” Arzada bowed. The vampire was the least monstrous of the five, but there were too many imperfections for her to be even remotely human. Her red eyes were ringed with yellow and lacked pupils. It looked as if she considered her life to be aimless. Her hands were misshapen, jagged, as if the flesh had become serrated steel. Dove thought of soulless machines and thoughtless murder. This one, Dove announced, would make a good bodyguard. Then she raised her hand, drawing the gauntlet closed into a fist. The solitary eye blinked and swirled with malice as she turned to face the crowd. “We have to strike first. The humans are cunning and cowardly creatures. If we do not fight, they will not fight; merely play their politics and whittle at the noble vampires until there is nothing left for you in Tia. If they want to press our faces to the fire, let them push instead, and we’ll pull them in with us.” Her voice was cold and hard, but the crowd was satisfied with her words alone. Not yet satisfied, actually – their eyes demanded orders and calls to action. Aindreas, a large and brutal beast of a vampire, was to head to the blood banks. He would not protect them. He would break them all open and let the masses feed one last time, to remember the taste of subservience and fear, before they were loosed upon the Inferiors. Angelic-winged, fair-haired Fiachna would accompany him along with the hungry and thirsty. Quiet, shifty Tasgall was sent into one of the nameless corridors to emerge among the fearlessly asleep humans of Tia. His claws – torturous razor blades and half-dull hooks – would make a mess out of the children and the parents who followed their screams. The windows were to be painted with blood, and the Inferiors’ torn bodies left in the streets as example of the Unnaturals’ creed. When the rosy dawn came, the city would find them and realize that it was, rather, the dusk of a long and hopeless night. Those who best stalked the night followed Tasgall. Aisling was to go to Central Plaza, where she would make a spectacle of Jane for the people upon the stage they had built for themselves. The frustrated and violent would follow her. Arzada and Dove would follow shortly after to watch and assist. Each of them nodded as she gave her instructions, and like wraiths vanished into the darkness, leaving the lich with her two retainers. Dove’s gaze seemed to settle on Arzada after the others had left and the chamber steadily emptied of souls. It was unwavering. The woman did not notice for a few seconds and hesitated when she did. “Is there something you need?” Dove was looking past Arzada, but the vampire without pupils couldn’t tell. The tactician finally refocused on her face. “What? Yes. This should be gap enough. Let’s go.” She hopped down onto the floor behind the podium and strode into the tunnel. Arzada hurried to match her newfound superior. “Entertain me.” Dove said without looking away from the path before them. Again, she seemed lost in thought. “Tell me about Nico Sera and his ‘creator.’”

Bad ends...I think it says much about me when these are the planned endings for my current set of characters. Dove: After taking severe damage to her phylactery, she regenerates to full immortal health physically. Mentally, however, her core personality and memories have been destroyed, and she spends the rest of eternity mentally damaged, barely able to form coherent sentences and unable to comprehend her reason for living although there is an incredibly strong desire to do something that haunts her crippled mind. Alan: Ten years' depression is solved in the worst way possible: by falling in love and becoming codependent. The love object in question either rejects his advances, or returns them then subsequently dies herself. After falling back into deep depression but failing to find the resolve to kill himself, he then returns to Dove, his "master," who in the meantime has become brain damaged, because he doesn't know to do anything else with his life. He both loves and hates the lich, as she is almost family (Stockholm Syndrome), but overwhelmingly he feels pity and is trapped being her caretaker for the remainder of time. Aria: In the absence of Alan, her "guardian," who has taken off chasing a woman, and Dove, who has become a wreck, Aria is taken by an unknown group of people and whisked away somewhere, stripped of her free will and used as a tool - that, or killed without ever reaching the end of her childhood.

She’d made it to “Chapter Five: Risk Management” when it began to rain. The tell-tale splash of liquid across the way broke her gaze away from the fascinating tactics of matching maturities and this thing they called “insurance.” A second heavy droplet followed the first, a warning for inclement weather. Had she packed an umbrella? No, but she could always make one – She was indoors. The lich frowned. It was very much sunny through the windows, full of the laughter of children and misplaced anger of men on wheels. Splash. Dove looked again towards the side of the hall. It was very clearly raining…something. The concept of “indoor rain” was an easy one to grasp by even children – it just happened to be incorrect. But this was a new world, replete with new rules and governed by new, non-intuitive principles (like that of the “regressive tax bracket”). Who was she to question the laws of God? Let him have his fun. She could adjust to this new world where it rained inside but not out. Maybe men were called women here, and women men. Maybe it was some sort of strange world like that. Her hand rose as she watched the drip and splash. The threads in her hands shot upwards and ballooned over her in a dainty silken awning. Red lace did not suit her much, but she had already chosen her color. Why’d it have to be red? She was much more a fan of blue, or green. Dove meandered away from the center absentmindedly in the direction opposite from the precipitation, focus returning to her book. A thin current of wind picked up about her to scatter the pesky rain if it tried to follow her.

The path of retreat was closed off, though they thought nothing of it. Selandra only looked back once to confirm for herself the worrying permanence of stone. They were never going to retreat – the idea, once dormant, was now permanently dead. Then they moved forward again into the dark of the cave. Without the dim flicker of magma-fire, they couldn’t see too far ahead – at least, a human wouldn’t be able to. The wolf should’ve had the eyes to match his form. Those who lived with shadows learned many things to continue living there. The mercenary smacked the pommel of her now-deformed sword against the wall, eyes lighting up as the ruby lit up to warm the hall with light. “Hah! Knew it was worth the cost.” The darkness was not vanquished, but it was beaten back. The reflections of red light off slick rock winked like stars against the distant ceiling, occasionally blinking into nothingness, but the walls were illuminated enough. At least, she knew the direction to go. So they pressed forward, uneventfully. The stone was plain and undecorated granite. There were few things to mark the distance traversed. The lich thought it might’ve been miles, dozens of them; the underground was timeless and nobody knew whether minutes or hours had elapsed before they met the fork. One path sloped downwards; the other rose. The first one was yet more rock, but mixed in with chips of crystal and the fruits of the deep earth – a gentle breeze blew from it that had the scent of earth and forest. Strange, for it descended into the bowels of the earth. The second was stony brick, the material that made up dungeons and the caverns created by men. The air was dead and unmoving there, and thin; almost as if it at the peak of a mountain. Dove did not like this; Selandra disagreed. “This is seriously cool, but I feel like we should split up to speed things up. We can talk to each other through the mental link anyway, right?" Nieve and Martin were inseparable, so that left her with the wolf.

You. Carlos has told me tales of you. Epics. Maybe even histories, who knows? Welcome back. Hopefully your stay this time around is as fruitful as it once was.

Unfortunately, Robs is going to be absent from the site for a while due to extenuating forces. He wanted me to tell you this, and let you know that the RP is put on hold for now until he (hopefully) returns.

Unfortunately, Robs is going to be absent from the site for a while due to extenuating forces. He wanted me to tell you this, and let you know that the RP is put on hold for now until he (hopefully) returns.

Popping in to let you guys know, Robs is going to be absent from the site for the next few months; he will probably be returning sometime in the future, but not recently. Therefore, he told me to tell y'all that the RP is probably put on hold for now, to be resumed someday... Robs is an excellent GM though so I would definitely recommend keeping this in mind for resuming in a few months!