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Turn 2: The hills have eyes
Before you continue.- Yo peeps, I had a very rough month of school and college limiting me in many ways. One of them being able to actively work on the rtd, so I;ve postponed it till after the month. I should have notified you, but it’s too late for that now. Expect updates at regular intervals now.
Player/world actions
Ahrian and Rapheal hoped to avoid any fighting, but danger always finds you. On their way to the circle, the duo got ambushed by some road bandits. Unfortunately for them, they bit off more than the could chew as the easy pickings of a young girl and a possibly armed man turned out to be a mage and a spirit guard.
The bandits surrounded the duo with most of them coming from the forest, some from the road ahead and one person which followed them from the previous town. Ahrian quickly made short work of some of the bandits as she transformed them into smoldering corpses and struck fear into the rest with her over-sized fireballs. Besides killing a few Ahrian also killed the mount of what seemed to be the leader of this group and severely hurt him.
Rapheal went more for a physical approach as he charged and surprised one of the bandits, by quickly incapacitating him. Rapheal crushed his shoulder and turned his attention to the hooded figure which looked like he was skilled with the use of a short sword and dagger.
The fight was short but intensive, as quick manoeuvring and a couple attempts at hitting each other resulted in Raphael breaking the thief’s defense in one fell slash across the thief’s chest.
Shortly after the ambush the fight had ended with a few of the bandits being dead and the others having run away. The duo saw where they ran, so they could chase them down or start looting the bodies and do something else.
Link to fight:
http://www.quicktopic.com/51/H/7eTZexhJRcu
World Actions
No world actions.
Player Actions
Dwarmin (Leo Westerland) "We should find a place to hole up for the night-we won't get much sleep, I think, unless it's the sleep of the dead. It's likely whatever we're hunting is going to pay us a visit tonight..." Leo muses to his silent friend.
"It's best we build a big fire and keep it lit all night-sleep lightly, carry torches, hour shifts each until the sun comes up. On top of a hill, maybe-cut away shrubbery to deny cover and feed the fire. They'll see two of us and likely think their numbers can carry them...well, we'll just have to do our best."
Action: Find a good place to camp for the night that is easy to defend, with clear sightlines and some height-set up watch fires and shifts to keep a look out for visitors.
Some though later, I begin to load bullets into my weapon. "So, what should we expect, other than little gremlins biting at our ankles?"
"Well, that's the thing about Demons...they don't exactly fit into categories. You can't tell till you face one....good example, I told you earlier about the Tacet Filus? Those are called Silent Sons...because they steal people, or find corpses and replace them, so they look just like us-no one notices anything, but they tend to be quiet, keep to themselves. Not always for the reasons you'd think. I'm sure most are spies or assassins for the Demon armies, but others just...blend in, and live normally. We only find out about some of them when die of old age and...revert. They have wives and husbands and families and no one every suspected a thing...at least, that's what they say.
Of course, they're still Demons, and it's hard for them to survive here. I've heard it's because they don't belong in our world, they need the raw energy-I guess it's called mana-from either raw flesh, blood, or strong emotions such as fear, to persist. It's possible they could feed from other emotions, but who can say for sure? All I know is most Silent Sons eventually have to kill something to stay healthy and keep their disguise up-otherwise they start to lose their glammer. It is usually livestock they kill, though they like jobs where they can get access to mortals-soldiers, mercenaries, executioners and the like...
Natural form sort of looks like a skeleton. You want to know how they mimic us? Well, they just sort of...slide right into your skin. It's pretty gross, though not as bad as the Bone-Thieves."
He shrugs, grimacing.
"What I'm saying is, don't be fooled if a pretty girl appears to you in the night and asks for help. It might be a Demon in disguise. A Silent Daughter, I guess. You can usually tell by the eyes, at least with the younger ones-they can mimic nearly everything about us, but they have trouble with eyes. Don't ask me why.
Or, it could be any one of a hundred other things...keep the fire lit and keep your wits sharp. And remember there's never been a Demon we couldn't kill."
(-) Shared turn with Salsacookies, see his for information.
Blazing Glory (Katrianne Ellen) Reach the village
(-) Baro was of questionable help and you didn’t get any real clues either. You’ll have to wait till nighttime and see what’s up or maybe the villagers know more unlike Baro. Until then, there’s the rest of the day where you can do anything you want.
DarkArtemisFowl (Raphael Markaus) Reach the circle
(-)Auto-ed turn taking Ahrians action as example.
“Raphael, could you tie up the survivor?”“Yes, no problem.”You walk over the the hurt bandit, he tries to resist your attempts at subduing him but his shoulder makes it difficult to do so. You strip him off his weapons and armor, then blindfold him.
Ahrian’s is just about finished checking up on the bodies and ready to interrogate the captive, so you go and push horse carcass off the road. You almost broke a sweat, doing so.
Ahrian having finished interrogating the captive, tells you of her findings. Afterwards you escort the captive to the nearby town and turn in the captive. Their reaction is not what you expected and unfortunately there was no bounty of some sorts. Ahrian also overheard something and quickly told you about it, seems we might have company tonight.
A quick trip around the town to sell the loot and buy some neccesities bring the both of you at a local tavern. You’ll be staying there for one night in a mediocre room.
What now?
Lenglon (Ahrian) ((waiting on deciding on post-combat action until DAF posts his. I'm inclined to:
first secure the remaining bandits (tie up + remove weapons, etc) and
check to see if the "dead" ones are actually dead,
then heal any life-threatening injuries they have, and while healing them
interrogate our captives about why they ambushed us and who they work for,
then loot the bodies / anything we want from the ones we captured,
then move the bodies off the road,
then escort the captives to the nearest town and
turn them in to the guard (and check for if they have a bounty on them for us to collect, as well as
telling the guards about the bodies we had to leave out there so they can get a burial detail to handle it),
then spend the night in town because it'll be getting late by then if not sooner,
then go shopping for equipment using our spoils, then, finally,
decide if we want to continue on our way or want to follow up on the bandit's employer or abort our trip entirely, depending on the information we got from the previous steps.
(-) You let Raph do more of the physical labor, like tying them up while doing the other less dangerous activities.
While Rapheal is disarming and securing the only bandit left alive, you go check on the others to make sure that they are truly dead.
You make a quick pass around the charred remains, confirming that they are in fact very dead and still smoldering. The stench is quite strong, so you don’t stick around for long.
Then you go to the cloaked figure, lying in a pool of blood. You carefully turn him around, revealing the huge gash. He too is dead by having bled out.
Raphael is just about finished securing the captive. You need him alive for interrogation so you tend to his wounds. You don’t have any medicine with you, so cleaning it with water and bandaging it with some cloth is the best you can do.
Following the bandaging is the interrogation.
“Who send you? Why did you attack?”The bandits painfully mutters:
“ It was Gaheron. He wanted to trade you in as a slave to some rich baron and send the man to the working mines.”“Who’s Gaheron?”“I don’t know, I took orders from a guy under him. In fact the coward ran away. All I know is that you don’t mess with him if you want to live. I won't talk anymore and soon neither will you.” he threatens.
Fair enough, you think. You leave the bandit for the moment to loot the bodies, he won’t be going anywhere anyway.
You loot the thief first. You take the hard leather armor excluding the body which is destroyed, 2 iron daggers, a shortsword, 1 vial with some liquid in it, a note, silver ring and the boots.
The note says:
Lucius, the hawks report of a young girl with white skin and possible ear and tails accompanied by one male. They are cloaked and will come from the Northern road. Get Ebon and round up the mob, bring me the girl she’ll fetch a nice price, dispose of the man.
Well that’s nice. Unfortunately he won’t be happy with the recent events. Looking further there are the charred bodies. There’s nothing to take expect the weapons so you grab their swords.
You wait a bit for Rapheal to finish his labor and then escort the captive to the nearby down. They are, to your surprise,not too pleased considering that you caught a bandit. They attempt poorly congratulate you, but fail in doing so. There’s something wrong and you happen to overhear a whisper on the way out.
“What will we do now? Gaheron will have our heads for this.”
“I don’t know. Treat the bandit and be helpful to them. He might leave us alone, since we aren’t the ones responsible for this.”
“Yes, you’re right. Let’s hope that will be the case.”You don’t have time to overhear more since i’d strange and suspicious, standing around in the hallway. It seems that Gaheron has the village under his control and the villagers are quite afraid of him. You might need to be on your guard and the night might be a sleepless one.
You go around the village selling the spoils of war, they aren’t too difficult to sell. The profits aren’t huge since the weapons and armor aren’t of exceptional quality or use rare materials, but money is money. Having sold the loot and bought a couple necessities like medical things, food and water. You’ve got 13 silver and 8 bronze left.
You spend 6 silver for the both of you for a night at some local tavern. The room is very plain, 2 beds, sheets, pillows, table with a jug of water. Nothing amazing but sufficient for a decent night of sleep.
What now?
You gained Basic Medicine Kit Salsacookies (Ronald Bones) "Yeah, sounds like a good plan." I begin to set up camp, and get a good look of the surrounding wilderness. "Y'kno, It's very hard for me to imagine something so evil can hide in someplace so beautiful. I despise deception, makes you wish it's real, only to discover it's out to kill you."
Some though later, I begin to load bullets into my weapon. "So, what should we expect, other than little gremlins biting at our ankles?"
(-) You check your gun to see if it's loaded and load up any of the empty barrels. Jokingly you ask something, but Leo's response is not too pleasing. You take a look around and see a good spot set-up camp.
The spot is right in the open quite close to a small cliff, you wouldn't die from a fall but it would leave behind something. You have a good overview of the area under the cliff and around you since there is only dry shrubbery and lots rocks around it. You mention the place to Leo and he agrees that it's a decent spot given the circumstances. While you prepare the camp, Leo starts a fire using the dry shrubbery, sticks and some luck.
While the fire slowly starts burning you hurry around grabbing any wood you can find and return to camp. The fire starts smoldering and the deep darkness of the night sets in. There are only a few small clouds in the sky and such, you can clearly see around the camp. A couple hours pass with nothing to warn Leo about until you see a bunch of rocks moving in the distance, various lenghts away from eachother. The heaps reach no bigger than your knees but there are atleast 5 homing in on your position.
"Leo.""Yes?""The rocks are moving.""Moving? To where?""Here."Ronald and Leo quickly scramble their weapons and prepare for combat, steadily the rocks approach.
"What could they be? Demons?""I don't know but if these are demons then I haven't seen or heard about them before."[/i]
The rocks are nearly here, both of you tighten your grips and prepare to evade. Though just before you, the rocks stop moving.
"Don't let up, it might be a trick."The rocks grows slightly bigger as some creature akin to a lizard shows itself. The rocky part seems to be a part of it's outershell. They totally ignore you as they run past you to the fire. The lizards huddle around the fire and then hide inside their rocky shells.
"Hmm. Not what I expected."Leo thinks hard.
"Oh. I actually remember these things, or at least something that looked like these. Back when I was a kid around northern fringe of the Harathi desert, there were these sand murkers. Lizards with hard rocky shells. They hid themselves from danger since the shell was nearly impossible to crack and they scavenged whatever they could find. Meat, greens, rotten food, one even ate a basket that smelt off apples. They were harmless since they didn’t attack anyone, but their voracious appetite made them a real pest to deal with.. "
"How do we get rid of them?"
"Well, we either crack their shell and kill them, leave them alone or we'll have to lift them. I wouldn't prefer the latter since these seem bulkier than I remember and they are really heavy considering they carry real rocks on their back."
“Let’s see what they do and do something about them later. Will you take watch now?”
“Yeah, that’s fine. Get some rest. There may be more surprises.”Nothing else happens throughout the night, Leo and Ronald continuously rotated their shifts just in case. In the morning the sun rises from behind the mountains revealing the slopes and the lands below.
What now?
Player Data
Leo Westerland, Sometimes mocked as "Goldenrod"
Age: 24
Appearance: A young man with healthy tanned skin, dark green eyes, and slick golden hair worn shoulder length. He has a wide, friendly face and an aquiline nose-handsome in most ways, and prefers a small, neatly trimmed beard, of a darker gold than his hair. He is tall, but slender, willowy but tough. A small chunk of his left ear is notably missing. He often wears simple garb in the manner of a hedge knight-a spotless white tunic, tough wool-spun breeches, and a faded grey-red tabard on his chest, and he usually hooded in white as well. He often sports a battered heraldic round-shield in his left hand depicting a sort of insect with eight legs, two claws, and a stinger on it's tail, encircled in a triangle of daggers, on a field of grey-red. He wears a small black stone embedded in a medallion, on a simple bronze chain necklace about his neck at most times.
Biography: Hails from the fringe of the Harathi Desert, just south from the Tarkan Steppes. Leo is the youngest son of a noble family, a rider from birth, and a risk taker. He has spent most of his life in the murky depths of Harathi Noble life-where morality is cheap, and honor is a extravagance-blood and water are the only debts worth repaying. His youngest years were spent carousing, and wasting money-until he killed another young man in a duel at 16, in a fit of temper. He started moving on then, disgusted and tired of his life, and hasn't looked back since-he decided to honor the code of the Lancer, more or less...he was maybe fortunate, since his lands were engulfed in the Demon War merely two years later.
Leo has at times been a message runner, a sellspear, and a bandit, though for good reasons-as the youngest son of his family, he is unlikely to inherit anything, and the only thing that makes him more valuable from other fighters is the horse he rides, a tough desert stallion named "Stranger". Recently he has met a companion on the road, a woman named Araline Lenore, that he was quite taken with-she's a Lancer like him, or claims to be. Unfortunately she's also recently gone missing during a melee with some very odd sorts-Leo has been searching for any sign of her for about a month now, with no luck...in truth, when he heard of the demons, he shrugged and paid it no more mind at the time, citing his own concerns-even though it was his own homeland that was on the forefront of the war, from what he's heard there's little he could do, or imagines he could do-what he hears is mostly horror stories, and he wants no part of it. Leo is a man who very rarely considers the larger world, or any bigger target than the enemy planted in front of him, or the woman he hopes is waiting for him.
Strength::9
Dexterity::9
Intelligence::4
Constitution::10
Perception::4
Charisma::7
Competent High Diplomat
Competent Spear user
Novice Animal Care
Aligment Pebble(Misc.)[Changes color depending on the aligment of the holder. Must be held]
Chainmail Armor
1h Shortspear
Medium Iron Shield
Demonica Encyclopedia
Stranger(regular horse mount)
(Gender: Female.)
Age: 26
Appearance: She keeps her brown hair in a pony tail while her eyes are something between blue and green, she has a scar on the left side of her forehead, likely caused by talons, she tries to conceal it but her left eye has a habit of twitching when she's annoyed, she often has a tired look from not resting enough, despite her various physical flaws, she is appealing to most people, and her voice is clear, she has a muscular build which manages to stay within proper proportions, but only just.
Biography: Katriane was born as a only child to a poor farmer named Darrion Hillis and his wife Geneve Rossana, when she was 4, Rossana passed away, but Darrion, rather then becoming more distant in grief, embraced Katriane as his only family left, he taught her about a few plant types and how to make a fire, but not much else, Katriane only learned of her true destiny when she was 21, when demons attacked her village and she managed to fend off some demons with a wood cutting axe when they broke into her house and she rallied the village to fight long enough for the local lord, who went by the name Garion Calder, to learn of the attack and kill the demons with his forces, Darrion survived but lost his legs, Garion employed Katriane as one of his body guards and it became obvious that she didn't simply have a stroke of extreme luck, when Garion learnt of this he personally taught her the best he could of the ways of war, after 2 years as a body guard and later 1 year as his adviser, she had left his employ and wandered for the last 2 years, making her mark wherever she could, she grew distant from her father when she had less and less time to visit him, even though she is distant, she still truly cares about him, despite her extraordinary abilities, she isn't very well known.
Strength::10
Dexterity::8
Intelligence::7
Constitution::9
Perception::7
Charisma::6
Novice Survivalist
Competent Tactician
Competent Sword User
Brooch(Misc.)[Contains a small framed picture of Katrianne's Mother and Father]
- Basic Medicine Kit: (Tweezers, Herbs, clean rags, splint, small knife)
Graveyard
No one's dead yet!
Notes
- Do not be warned for the slowness of the RTD, I'm alive and well just on vacation in Ireland and laptop-use is limited.