The Doom That Came To Lookshy

[The Demented One]

Less than a mile from the walls of Lookshy, a blasted and barren heath cuts across the cultivated fields like an unhealing wound. The weeds and brambles of this field are all dead, and have been for centuries, but they never decay. The Seventh Legion salted the ground, to no avail. Now cairns bearing wards ring the Mourning Fields, the shadowland that lingers at the fringes of Lookshy like a cancerous vestige of sloughed-off skin. No one, living or dead, would be so foolish as to transgress against the borders of the shadowland, still haunted by the maddened ghosts of Lookshy's fallen, those cut down by their own army's devastating arsenal of soul-breaking weapons. No one, neither man nor ghost, can hope to escape it alive once he has entered.

And thus, the Mourning Fields were easily the choicest beachhead from which to storm Lookshy. At the Mask of Winters' behest, all five of you, deathknights or deathknights-by-honor, have been sent to this dead land–sent, or else exiled, though that would be too harsh a word. Within the week, the five of you have managed to establish a fortification–or rather, the army of zombies entrusted to the Hollow Carnifex by his liege has built such a fortification, an earthwork fortress reinforced with bones and mortared with refuse and decay, a mound rising up from the shadowland's heart. With the ghost-haunted wasteland encircling it on all sides, it could easily be said to be a fortress unassailable, impenetrable to all advance.

And thus, the five of you are fraught with the starkest of confusion as Saturnday comes to noon. A bell tolls in every trench and chamber of the fortress, pulled by loyal dead arms. Alarums, alarums proclaiming an intruder on the shadowland. Impossible. But nevertheless, the alarm goes out. It is with a dread certainty that you rise to seek out the cause of the alarm–whatever may be proud or foolish enough to enter into the Mourning Fields will surely find his pride broken, his foolishness corrected at the hands of the Deathknights.

[GryffonDurime]

Bloodied Mulberry stirs from the deep alcove of bone where she's been reclining, half-asleep in the murk of a Shadowland morning. She leaps from her position, tumbling with palms outstretched to the floor before bending backwards to let her feet touch as well. A belt of silver and bright fire opals rests loosely around her waist, jingling at her hip with every brisk step as she crosses the length of the hall. She straightens her simple black dress, stitched as it is with moonsilver, and it erupts suddenly, inflating like a blowfish before contracting, spreading across her skin like living ink before settling as a taut black catsuit with a short train of dark lace and a veil to match.

"Probably just an errant dragon or two," She smiles to herself and then leaps from the window, catching hold of a bony parapet before flipping backwards onto the roof. She clings tightly to it, staying in the shadows as she surveys, looking for the source of the alarm.

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

Plated arms reach out and grasp tools of dark iron. Saws, scalpels, pliers and hammers... Flesh stands before him filled with dark mechanisms, twisted gears and tendons holding it together, though the bulk that belongs to the leg is shrouded in darkness. His dark lab could possibly more considered a torture chamber. Hooks, saws and other tools of both surgery and agony hang from the walls and high ceiling and piles of corpses lay around in various states of alteration, some for the better and most for the worst... for now.

A thin man in a black hood and bowed head approaches the Carnifex and speaks in a low voice, inaudible to all but the Carnifex himself. He turns his pale face toward the minion granted to him by his liege. His face is nearly incapable of expression, but a sense of curiosity lights up his face. Once he shoos the undead servant he walks up a set of black stairs where the alarm is more audibly sounding. "Mulberry!"

[WhiteKnight777]

Grim

A figure steps out of the mist with the soft, mournful jangling of bells, moving with a cat-footed step over the unhallowed ground. The Grim Foole wears a faint grin as he sees the others rushing to answer the alarm, though he seems in no hurry himself. His instrument and his weapon are both slung over his back, and a faint chorus of moans echoes softly from the accouterments as their owner moves. He nods in acknowledgment to the other two already present

"Ah... lovely, broken moon and glorious, shattered husk.. the nightbirds cry as feet trod the black sanctuary. Sally we forth to dance with lost children and lead them capering down into the dark?"

[Naquadah]

In one of the courtyards, Kohl moves in an erratic manner, clad in an ash-colored linen hakama. The air is silent. He makes no noise; the only sounds are the scrape of the undead and the settling of the fortress's own bones.

Kohl ends his kata just as the first alarm begins to peal. Only a few drops of sweat bead his brow and chest after his workout. He smiles, stretching languidly and reaching towards the soulsteel stave driven chisel-end down into the shadowland soil. Balanced on the blunt end is a goblet of dark iron, inset with rough chunks of amber. He savors the cacophony of the alarm, his flesh prickling with excitement as he drinks deeply from the mulled blood-wine filling the goblet. With a quick motion, he plucks It Holds Enthralled from the ground, turns, and strides towards one of the doors leading into the fortress. The alarm continues; Kohl moves in tune with its rhythm, moving purposefully but leisurely into the darkness towards his chambers. He squeezes the stave gently; it collapses into a short baton. With another flick of his wrist, the chisel end blooms like a dark lotus, shaping itself into a fan.

Kohl fans himself as he enters his chamber, stripping quickly and donning several layers of dark silk: ghost-corpus gray, midnight black, and a deep mossy green. He slips black, light-eating bracers over his wrists; faces whorl in them and mouth a silent scream, then fade apathetically back into torpor. Pausing before his vanity, he quickly applies kohl above his eyes before turning and moving out of the room, still with the rhythm of the alarms. He allows himself a small smile as he exits the fortress and heads for the main gate of the compound. "Finally, the neighbors have come to greet us!" His steps grow higher with the alarms as he pirouettes towards the gate.

[AmberVael]

Sable

The bell tolls, but whispers still cling to her mind. Slowly, reluctantly, Sable Scion drags her contemplations away from the quiet words of the Neverborn, directing her focus outwards and towards the gray world once more. Her eyes take a moment to adjust to its light, having grown used to the darkness, while she takes her time getting to her feet. For a moment, she is unsteady- but she recovers her balance and poise, taking in a breath and giving a single brush along her clothes with long fingered hands.

Voices whisper and clamor quietly around the desolate 'garden' that she has claimed as her own, echoing the quiet pull of her masters. She found it soothing, and helpful for her concentration... though doubtless it would prove maddening to simple mortals. Negative emotions and feelings tinge the area, creating a dark mire from which it was difficult to escape.

With a quiet sigh, the necromancer moves away from her refuge to seek out the cause of her disturbance. Soft streamers of silk follow the movement of her limbs as she walks swiftly to join her fellows.

[WhiteKnight777]

Grim

The jester capered about his companions, his eye glittering with childish glee. One hand idly slid delicately over the soulsteel patch that covered the other, shadowed orb, as if contemplating its removal. Then, with a single fluid motion, his hand darted over his shoulder, drawing his slim, elegant blade and plunging it downward. There was a soft, wet sound and a high-pitched squeal, and the tip of his blade came up, impaled upon it a pale, bloated corpse-fed rat, an unwholesome beast whose deathly pallor revealed its unnatural origins. Grim leaned forward with a delicate, birdlike movement of his head, biting off the front half of the rat, crunching into it with disturbing gusto. He licked his lips, dabbing at them fastidiously with a lacy white kerchief before stuffing the still-twitching hindquarters of the creature into a pouch for later. He gave a satisfied sigh, then began to walk forward into the spectral mists, looking back at the rest of his circle with one eyebrow raised in askance, one hand beckoning.

[Naquadah]

Kohl hears a loud squeak, followed by crunching and smacking as he exits the fortress, betraying the presence of his fellow deathknights. He suppresses a shudder at the thought of what the Grim Foole might be eating this time. Even after the torture and its release and the plunge into this state, existing on the line between life and death, he still appreciates some of the finer things...except now he likes his wine made from blood, and his silks spun from giant maggots. But not much has changed, not fundamentally.

Nobody could tell him what waited outside the walls. He extends his senses forward, probing for the soft flutter of a heartbeat, the scrape of boots, or the clank of gear against armor in the chill, still air, tuning out the loud clang of the alarm bells as they fade behind him.

Kohl hears his Circle move, and their attempts to conceal themselves in the mists amuse him. He knows each is a weapon, just like himself, optimized for use against all things living. And each has his or her own special talents. But none other among them is a Child of Blood, and none other is as silent as Death itself. He draws the misty shadows close and silently flicks the soulsteel fan open, holding its bladed edge against one forearm, ready to lash out. Ghostly scenes play out across it; he reverses his grip so the flowing surface points toward his arm, so that its movement does not betray his presence. It quells its movements at his mental urging, and Kohl becomes one with the mist.

[The Demented One]

As Sable and Kohl stride towards the main gates, they catch sight of their remaining circle-mates, Carnifex, Grim and Mulberry perched atop the roof of the fortress. Pushing open the heavy slabs of deadwood that serve as makeshift doors, they see the cause of the alarm. This is no invasion from Lookshy–the lowest private of the Seventh Legion would never be so foolish as to march right up to the gates of an enemy fortress and wait, or to enter a ghost-haunted shadowland without bringing in talon after talon of soldiers, armed with the finest arsenals of Lookshy. And that is exactly what the would-be intruders have done.

They are three, no more and no less. Standing almost patiently at the front gates, shining a beaming smile at Sable and Kohl, is a young man, red-headed and brazen-skinned. He wears a deep red coat of monkish cut, its collar ringed with bells, over a bare chest that is impressively muscled, almost statuesque thews in perfect definition. He clutches a red bamboo-shoot, an impressive length that he holds like a traveling stick.

To his right stands an older man, dressed in a rustic shepherd's accouterments and just barely greyed with age. He has little of his companion's sanguine smile, a hard-etched scowl on his mien, and one hand on the handle of a massive tetsubo that dangles from his belt, studded with iron flanges. The last of the three is a girl just out of youth, almost bored-looking; her hands tucked deep into the pockets of the long leather coat she wears, along with a wide-brimmed hat.

"Well met!" shouts the young monk, his overbearing smile no less repugnant than the sun's light. "Could a few weary wayward wanderers prevail upon your hospitality for a night's stay? I fear we're utterly lost." He laughs, seeming idiot enough not to know he walks the paths of the dead.

[WhiteKnight777]

Grim

Grim rocked back on his heels, his head tipping towards the sky as he gave a hearty chuckle, clapping his hands together with unrestrained mirth as peal after peal of laughter burst from his lips, curtailed with a sudden snapping motion as his head swung downwards again, his eye focusing on each monk in turn. His lips curved in a broad grin, his teeth perfectly pearlescent as he spoke in a joyous voice. "Wayward wanderers led astray... sheep or shephards on true night's path, sun their only shield... Oh, the doors swing wide like hungry jaws, the portal yawns, the belly of the beast yearns for fullness. Songs unsung and tales untold 'round hearthfires, a disease as must be remedied and twice-quick. "

[AmberVael]

Sable

"We may prepare a welcome for you."
Sable says graciously, gesturing for them to enter as a good host should. There's a little bit of hungry curiosity to her smile, however, that isn't entirely comforting.
"As my friend's doggerel implies, we have few visitors in this area. Your presence would be most appreciated, as would any stories you may have picked up on the road."

With effortless grace, the necromancer moves to guide them inside, deciding that even if they were enemies, it would certainly be better to have them contained, so as to more easily deal with them. While some enemies were better outside of your walls, three travelers were not likely to be a substantial threat to her circle... and if they were, walls wouldn't stop them.

"Tell me, where was your destination, before you lost your way? Perhaps we can set you on the right path."
She asks, waiting for the tacit assent of the others before taking them further inside than through the gate.

[The Demented One]

The youth heaves a sigh of relief, following Sable into the fortress, as it is. After a moment's hesitation, his companions follow, each one warier than their apparent leader. As the necromancer closes the doors, the entrance hallway fades to a dim gloaming, lit only by the loose beams that slip through the gaps in the crude planking of the makeshift roof–gaps wide enough to see through, some even broad enough for a man to pass. While his partners seem fraught with suspicion at the morbid costuming of their hosts, their leader seems entirely unaware of anything unusual. "Thank you for your gracious invitation, madam. We had just set out from Lookshy, and I fear we've come far astray. I would only beg a night's rest, and we will set out by the morn!" he says, words seeming to come all too easily to him.

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

The pale, skeletal face that stared down at the wandering monks remained expressionless, as if Carnifex were lost in thought. He watched them enter the fortress from on high and mutters a small string of incomprehensible curses. He puts his hood up and begins to descend the stairs, the clacking of his cane.

Just as the monk finishes his sentence the dark figure walks into a beam of light almost as a ghost from the shadows, blocking their path. Two dark metal gauntlets reach out from the cloak and lowers the hood upon the man's head. His skin tight over his face, and indeed missing many appendages from his withered head. Ears, nose, eyelides, hair... leaving bare many pointed teeth and aberrant dark eyes. Very swiftly a third metal arm reaches from the darkness of his cloak and grabs the hilt of his weapon and letting it hit the ground with a sickening sound of metal on stone.

"Lookshy? You're from Lookshy, are you?" He said with cold rage, approaching the monks more and more swiftly.

[The Demented One]

As the Carnifex drops down, the monk's companions flinch away–and by the time they have regained their composure, they have weapons in hand. The man hefts his tetsubo high, gripping it in both hands; the girl now wields a pair of flamepieces, one in each hand. The brazen-skinned monk, though, never falters, his smile still shining bright. He takes his bamboo staff and holds it out before him, as if to block the path between him and his companions.

"I'd thought as much. You're something Exalted, aren't you? His smile is especially annoying. "Exalted, but of death-essence. I suppose I should introduce myself to you, no? These are my friends, Jareth and Chaya. My name is Little Beam. Little Beam, Son of the Unconquered Sun!" As he speaks, light flares from his countenance, sunbeams shining from his eyes, his nostrils, his mouth.

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

"Unconquered Sun!" He exclaims with mock resplendence, stopping short of them with two of his three arms held out, and he stood higher, now towering well over six feet in height. "Now I suppose you're those filthy little Sun-children, aren't you? Yes, I can tell from your annoying light show." He looked back down at him, looking him dead in the eye. "I suppose you're here... because we are here, am I correct?"

[AmberVael]

Sable Scion

"Subtlety continues to elude us, it seems."
Sable observes, though she doesn't seem overly disappointed by this. Her voice is most expressive as she continues.
"Though, at least we have presence of mind to work from a position of strength. Others, perhaps, lack this discretion. Tell me, what do you plan now, Little Beam? Do you think to bring your righteousness to us?"
Tone and emphasis play along the name condescendingly, turning each sound into a sneer.

"You may be brave enough to test yourself against us, but it seems your companions lack the same steel. Is it because they are weaker, I wonder? Or because they are heir to a little more wisdom?"
Her words flick out like knives, forming cracks in a wooden surface as she attempts to break his certainty- or at least that of his companions.

"Take care with your next words and actions, little light."

[The Demented One]

"This world is broken, you know. Ignis Divine now longer commands the loyalty of Heaven, the Sun's Chosen no longer rule the earth. If it weren't for that, things like you couldn't even exist!" He shifts into a relaxed stance, leonine in appearance and vigilance–surely some powerful technique of martial arts. "So no, I will not 'bring my righteousness' to you. I bring the righteousness of the Unconquered Sun, of the Creation-Ruling Mandate. You may submit, and flee the world of the living forevermore–or else you shall know the purity of the sun's flames!" Bold words. But only words.

[Naquadah]

Kohl flicks his fan shut with a snap, appearing from a shadow. "Oh dear, my darling," he murmurs, eyes catching on Little Beam's hard muscles, eyes filling with the dual hungers of lust and Oblivion. "The lands of the living, you say? Well, you don't quite know where you are, do you?"

He slips beneath and around the staff, eyeing Little Beam's companions. He holds their eyes, taps the fan against his lips as he circles them until he is again standing near Little Beam and his staff. "Oh no, none of you quite know where you are," he chuckles lightly. He runs the closed fan along the red bamboo staff and shoots a knowing glance at Carnifex, then steps back and under it again, flicking the fan open and easily obscuring himself in the dim light.

[WhiteKnight777]

Grim

The mad Moonshadow gives a wolfish, hungry grin, staring down Little Beam and his companions, catching them in his gaze like ghosts drawn towards Oblivion, his voice ringing out in soft, sibilant, urging tones.

"Three in light and five in darkness... but all walk in the night, and night holds sway. Sun sleeps and shadow rules the land - even mean guests and hungry ghosts know the laws that living and dead must abide. Guests are guests and ghosts are hosts, let them not devour each other while so many others remain uneaten." He turns his gaze to his companions. "Prophets of truth do not consume the flock before it has heard the message" he said in meaningful tones before returning his attention to the monks.

"Come... walk into the web with no fear of the spider, for it is really a black-winged butterfly, in caterpillar's guise and cocooned in lies of others... but the core is sweet indeed. Let us show what lies beneath."

Attempting a Social roll to convince them to stay and telling his companions to back off so they can get these three at the most opportune time. Say, night. He's invoking the rules of hospitality to convince each party it's the best thing to do, but it's mostly aimed at Sparkle Boy and friends, because he assumes his companions will pick up the real message.

Also, he'd like to get a better opportunity to aim the Eye at Mr. Shiny Pants to see if he's telling the truth. If he is, there's probably something fun they could do with him.

Activating Exquisite Etiquette Style for 1m and making a Manipulation + Socialize Roll, because he's lying through his pearly whites.

Manipulation + Socialize [roll0]

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

The Carnifex quickly turned his head to his generally perplexing comrade, his face showed it's common blankness. One that knows him might think with the level of contempt he generally showed everyone that he would cut down not only the Chosen of the Sun, but his painted ally. He however turned back to the opposing faction, his head moving very slowly and locking eyes with the crimson-clad man before him. "Yes... what is it you've come to say?"

I'm preparing to parry anything he has to throw at me. I suppose physically or socially, but I think I'll let the more socially capable characters handle that.

[GryffonDurime]

Mulberry, listening from the rooftops, decides that the time is right to descend from her perch. She rears back, gathers speed, and leaps, grabbing hold of a window pane in mid-flight before lowering herself gently to the ground beside the Carnifex. Her outfit has changed as well: now it's pale, orange sari wrapped tightly around her form that glints strangely in the Shadowland sunlight, reflecting all colors like the sick skin of an oilslick. Even Little Beam's light reflects strangely in it.

"How curious. A god claiming to act upon the Creation Ruling Mandate by violating it. Papa would be proud, I'm sure," she says as she entwines her arm around Carnifex's own. "Must be a big legacy to live up to, The Sun, don't you agree Carnifex? But trust Grimm to make our hospitality sound so...demented. Stay. All three of you, and let us divest you of your prejudices."

[WhiteKnight777]

Grim

Grim turns to Mulberry with a broad, cheery grin on his ivory countenance. Giving her an almost grotesquely exaggerated wink, he teases in the same upbeat voice. "Ah, broken moon, blame not the architect if the silver mouse cannot navigate the ebon maze wrought in the dancer's box of ivory."

his head swung back to the three travelers, his smile never wavering "But the spark must tire, a-wandering in the night. Strange paths before and behind, and side to side to side... come in, come in, and let there be night and rest and the trading of breath."

[AmberVael]

Sable

"Be careful, Little Beam. Your life is at stake here- will you gamble it so lightly?"
Sable's fingers play at the edge of her weapon, ready to draw it at the smallest provocation. However, it is not the weapon that is threatening, but her presence itself. Very slightly, her anima begins to show, coiling about her appearance and emphasizing its deadly, feral nature. Black tendrils of darkness tinge the air around her, not fully seen, but certainly felt.

"We can still invite you in as guests... if you will set aside your hostility."
Her posture, poise, and predatory gaze emphasize her power and capability as she attempts to make Little Beam and his companions back down.

Spending 4 motes on Second Presence Excellency to add two successes. I think I've described this as Appearance + Presence, so...
[roll0]
Its basically an attempt to intimidate and make them rethink fighting.

[The Demented One]

"I'm very sorry. I don't think so." says Little Beam, unswayed by your arguments. "I'm not the Unconquered Sun. I'm the first hint of dawn that shows the sun's course, the last violet of sunset that watches the shadows. If the Sun-Kings are ever going to reclaim their dominion, then the way must be laid before them by my hands–and if that means I must fight against you, then I will. I'm giving you one last chance, you know. You can still leave, go back down to the Underworld and tell your masters that Creation is not theirs. And if you will not..." He bows his head with somber resignation, the sunlight of his aura shading purple. "...then I must stand against you."

[WhiteKnight777]

Grim

Grim looked at the trio for a moment, before unslinging his instrument from around his shoulder. The bells on his motley jangled softly in accompaniment as he began to recite in a low, hypnotic voice, his fingers plucking out a strange, mournful melody on the soulsteel strings.


Walks in sunlight, walks in shade
while all around the world goes gray
love crumbles, hope fades
true night's grip alone remains

sun goes black
dragons cry
moon's face cracks
and stars shall die

stride without fear into the dark
and listen to this lyric lark
come and join us, oh argent light
come, and know the joy of night.


Even as he speaks, the air around Grim grows dim. Shadows dance like flickering candle-flames, shadows without any light to cast them that whisper seductively in the ears of the three wanderers, wrapping sinously about them like lovers. Ghost voices whisper in their ear, a sweet, honeyed song of surrender, of the joys of Oblivion and the ultimate, seductive promise of letting go of desire, of pain, of all things.

Hmmm... let's see if a little music will convince them, eh? Performance check, spending 8m for 4 extra successes from Second Performance Excellency and simultaneously activating Haunting Apparition Trick as part of it. A total of 6 Extra successes, including the 2 from the Sanxian.

Charisma (4) + Performance (5) + (3) for Specialty (Speechmaking) makes a dice pool of 12.
[roll0]

[Naquadah]

There is a slight grating from the shadows underneath Grim's music, the sound of a sharp point drawn against unyielding material. From in front, from behind, but never seen, a grinding like a nail on a chalkboard, or jagged metal against granite. After a moment, Kohl's voice emanates from a shadow, and seems to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. His face appears, impossibly appears several feet up in the air. Only his face is visible, suspended within a wave of the shadows of unwholesome things. The grating noise continues.

As he speaks, the shadows in the entire room seem to writhe. The floor shimmers with the slickness of blood, and the few beams of light from outside bear screaming images of tortured souls bound into their ever-dimming lines. Before, he voice was cloying, as honey long ago left in clay jars in tombs. Now, it is sharp: the voice of cracked mirrors, maimed rats, insects crawling within a corpse. "You come into our home and insult us. You make claims and demands upon our own hearth in the name of an uninterested and absent god. And worst of all, you make a terrible mistake: we are not fully within Creation. Now, these offenses may all be forgiven, and we have offered that forgiveness to you. We offered you hospitality even as you act as an affront to it. You believe your light is enough. I rebuke you! May your torch flicker and gutter, and your tongue rot with the poison of your own ill manners! Your companions stand silent, but I see the glitter in their eyes; it is a look I am used to. Fear. Uncertainty. The faint gloaming of despair. Do they so gladly challenge Death itself as you do? It is not too late. Draw up a chair; fill a goblet. This need not end in bloodshed."

His eyes turn, spear both of the companions where they stand. His voice is somewhere between pleading and comforting. The grating noise sounds almost desperate; images of bats and large insects flicker at the edges of vision. "And if he does not, you need not bind yourself to his words. Do you make this choice? Does this man speak for you, or have you sense enough to realize that he has gladly led you to meet your end so far from your homes? Abandon him. It is not such a difficult thing to do. Has he done anything to safeguard your interests? If not, why should you suffer alongside him for his faux pas?"

Kohl is using Soul-Dessicating Style to instill the emotions of fear and shame into Little Beam AND his companions. Roll is Manipulation + Performance + hearthstone benefits. It Holds Enthralled is providing the effects of Haunting Apparition Trick upon the scenery. My appearance is 4, so the targets may suffer a MDV penalty if their Appearance is less than mine.

11d10

[The Demented One]

Little Beam stands resolute, but his companions are not so adamant. "I think we should go." cautions the older man, Jareth. "They have us right where they want us, we should escape, come back later with–" But the godling cuts him off with an upraised palm. "Leave, if you must. I will stay." A moment of wordless silence, and a decision. There is a thump as the man's tetsubo falls into hard earth of the fortress's floors, and he is leaving, back turned on his erstwhile allies. The doors groan, reluctant wood scraping hard earth as he pushes them open, and he is leaving. He will not survive past nightfall, not in this ghost-haunted desolation.

Chaya remains at the god's side, but there is nothing of courage in her eyes, nothing of the confidence that shines from Little Beam. She nervously unlimbers her firewands, fingers twitching on triggers drawn back to the precipice of firing. "No more words, dead men. The sun can dawn even amid shadows, amid shadowlands. I will show you!"

Violence.


Battle Joined

Tick 0: Kohl, Little Beam
Tick 1: Sable
Tick 2: Mulberry, Grim
Tick 5: Chaya
Tick 6: Carnifex


Kohl

2-die stunt on your Performance, 4 motes or 1 willpower.

Grim

2-die stunt on your Performance, 4 motes or 1 willpower.

Tick 0: Kohl, Little Beam

[Naquadah]

"It's your blood, glowworm. Spill it wherever you see fit. I certainly will," Kohl chuckles and loudly pops his neck, grinning as blood from his caste mark cascades down his face and drips from his chin. As his head lolls to either side, the shadows around him on that side shatter into a refracted array of grays, purple-blacks, bloody reds, mossy greens, bruised blues, and sickly mustard yellows. His anima flares; images of crows initially surround him, then shatter into strange component pieces. They appear as if looking at the reflection of a crow in a heavily cracked mirror. Kohl's face seems to fade into this morass until only his burning caste mark and grinning teeth are visible, then they too become just another part of the roiling mass of shadowy images. Where he was now looks like nothing more than an area of kaleidoscopic broken crow madness; there is no obvious trace of the Day Caste in that location. The terrible scraping sound continues, the sound of men carving glyphs into living rock with jagged iron picks.

I'll say I spent the 6m for Soul-Dessicating Style out of Peripheral Essence. Regain 4 and then, on my action, spend 6 more Peripheral motes to activate Crystal Chameleon Form (Speed 6).

Dodge DV 6, Parry DV 6

Soak 7B/7L, Hardness 0B/0L

Health Levels
-0 [ ]
-1 [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
-2 [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
-4 [ ]
X [ ]

Willpower 6/6

Personal Essence 15/15

Peripheral Essence 18/36

Active Charm Effects:


Crystal Chameleon Form: -2e to all attacks made against the character; character always meets the prerequisites to re-establish surprise in combat.


Ominous Portent Method: removes the unexpected quality from an incoming attack or effect, so long as the character's Resonance is less than (10 - Essence rating)


Soulsteel hearthstone bracers: opponents' soak decreased by 2B/2L

[The Demented One]

Little Beam stands unmoved before Kohl's kaleidoscopic anima, still grinning slightly. He moves to stand in front of Chaya, guarding her like a loyal hound–and then, with uncoiling thews, he lashes out with his staff, its tip licking at Carnifex's hand, one powerful blow aimed to knock the necroscientist's bloody goreripper from his grasp. But the Daybreak effortlessly twists his soulsteel arm out of the way with mechanical precision–and as the god spins his staff to catch him with the butt-end, Carnifex bats it away effortlessly with his dark metal claws. Chaya looks nervously over her guardian's shoulders, trying to aim from behind his defense, praying that he will not fall before these abominations.


Battle Joined

Tick 1: Sable
Tick 2: Mulberry, Grim
Tick 5: Little Beam, Chaya
Tick 6: Carnifex, Kohl

Tick 1: Sable

[AmberVael]

Sable Scion

"The sun cannot shine where it has set."
Decrees Sable, her repeater whirling into her hand. Noting the fear of Chaya, and Beam's protective stance, she aims the weapon at her for a second, attempting to provoke a defensive reaction from Beam, or perhaps distract him from his defense, at which point she instantly changes her target, firing at the glowing man as soon as his defense falters.

Smoke erupts from the barrel of the weapon, along with a tortured, hellish shriek; a streak of a faint blue substance shoots through the air, intended to burn and sear Beam's flesh with deadly reagents from the underworld. As she streams her essence into the task, Sable's anima erupts as well, become increasingly pronounced. Blackened cracks begin extending from around her body, tearing jagged wounds into the working of Creation.

Just noting all details here for my benefit- in case I get something wrong, you can correct me.

Flurry- draw the repeater and fire. Incurs -2 DV, and -3 to my attack.

Dexterity + Archery should be 8 dice (-3 equals 5). She'll spend 8 peripheral motes on the second excellency and add 4 successes.
[roll0]
10 successes. Awesome.

Damage is 10L, as I don't add anything to base weapon damage for a repeater, unless I miss my guess.

Other stats:

Dodge DV 3 (5-2), Parry DV 2 (4-2)

Soak: 4B/2L, Hardness: 0B/0L

Health Levels
-0 [ ]
-1 [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
-2 [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
-4 [ ]
X [ ]

Willpower: 7

Personal Essence: 12/16
Peripheral Essence: 46/55

Active Effects:

Nothing but prayer!

[The Demented One]

Sable's feint catches Little Beam off-guard; he steps back to defend Chaya, opening himself up to a gout of flame. The Deathknight's firewand spits avernal pyroclasm, charring heavenly flesh and blackening brazen skin. The god keens with pain as cobalt clings to his face, before extinguishing them with a mighty shake of his head. Soot blacks his mien, and his eyebrows have been burnt wholly away, leaving countenance that knows only anger, only rage.


Battle Joined

Tick 2: Mulberry, Grim
Tick 5: Little Beam, Chaya
Tick 6: Carnifex, Kohl, Sable


Sable

2-die stunt, 4m or 1wp

DV -2

Tick 2: Mulberry, Grim

[GryffonDurime]

Mulberry's eyes flare with silvered rage as Little Beam moves to attack the Carnifex and she rushes towards her mate, grabbing hold of his shoulder to boost herself into the air just as the necrosurgeon bats away Little Beam's attack. Her flesh pulsates as she arcs through the air, and there's a sound of tearing cloth and air against thin flesh as wings erupt from her back. Her skin bleaches to a slick white and thickens and her eyes dissolve into red insectile gems, many-faceted and still framed by outlandishly long orange eyeslashes that flutter.

Her feet graze the tip of Little Beam's polearm and she raises higher still into the air, collecting silvered essence. Her tattoos gleam in the bleak morning light as her anima erupts into a thousand wicked moths. She looks down, aims, and hurls two quick argent bolts--the glimmering threads of a Lunar warrior.


The jump is really more just using the Wings as a Move + shapeshifting into her Deadly Beastman Form + activating Relentless Lunar Fury to subdue Little Beam + Webbing!

Flurry is Transform/Web

5m for Deadly Beastman Transformation
3m for Countless Lustrous Strands
1m, 1w for Relentless Lunar Fury
2m for Golden Tiger Stance as Fury, which negates up to three points of DV penalty
=11m, 1w

Web Attack vs Little Beam (Speed 5):
5 Int + 5 Dex + 3 MA - 3 Flurry = 10 + 1 Automatic Success
[roll0] + 1 Success
Damage is 9L

Bloodied Mulberry
Dodge DV 6
Parry DV 4

Soak 5L/3B

Health
-0 [ ]
-1 [ ][ ][ ][ ]
-2 [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
-4 [ ]
X [ ]

Willpower 7/8
Essence:
-Personal: 18/18
-Peripheral: 32/43

Active Charm Effects:
-DBT (+1 Physical Attributes, Wings, Enhanced Sight, "Fur")
-Countless Lustrous Strands (Pew pew pew)
-Relentless Lunar Fury (+1 Auto Sux on Combat, enhanced Excellencies)
-Golden Tiger Stance (Negates 3 points of DV penalty)

[WhiteKnight777]

Grim

The dark jester gathers himself up as shadows pool about him, forming a mantle of liquid night. Before, his madness had made him seem a relatively harmless, capering fool - out of place among these terrible scions of death and darkness, a sideshow freak among deadly predators. But now he showed another side - Something lurked within him. A secret, a whisper, a darkling thought. Whatever it was, these interlopers caught a glimpse of it, a hint of the horrors that lay beneath the mask...

And then, Grim reached up, brushing his hair aside and revealing the soulsteel eyepatch that lay beneath. His fingers curled about it, before tearing it upwards, and the darkness flooded out.

Visions swirled about him, living phantasmagoria - dark visions, each of them an image of one or more of the three companions suffering some terrible fate. Death, dismemberment, unspeakable torture, the dissolution of their very souls, and worse - each brought to life before them, and each one unspeakably real - for they were no real illusions, but the truths of other worlds, brought to life by the power of the Eye. Here, Little Beam watched as Sol Invictus was torn apart by a cadre of Deathlords, his essence consumed and the sun going dark as creation died. There, all three could see themselves laid open, flayed to the bone and naked before the Mouth of the void, screaming as they stared into the heart of oblivion. All these scenes and more swirled around Grim like crows around a corpse.

But these effects were a mere side-show. Within the cloud of swirling possibilities, Grim stared directly at Little Beam, the Urd-Born Eye burrowing directly into his very soul.


Mechanically, what I'm doing here is activating Dread Lord's Demeanour, enhanced by Heart-Stopping Mien (And Killing Words Technique, if that's allowed. I'm honestly not sure if Dread Lord's Demeanor counts as an unnatural mental influence or not. Seems like it would, but I couldn't find the tag anywhere.) Then he's activating the Urd-Born Eye, since Grim sucks ass in combat and he might as well do something useful while trying to stay alive. The shiny effects of the orb are attempts at stunts to enhance Dread Lord's Demeanor with extra fearful-ness.

So, activating Dread Lord's Demeanor for 7m (I'm choosing to require a Willpower test to ignore, not a valor one.), enhanced with Heart-Stopping Mien and Killing Words, if it's allowed, for 1 wp each. Another 1 wp for activating the Eye at Little Beam.

Whispers - [roll0]

Hardness: N/A
Soak: 1L/2B
Dodge DV: 5: ( 3 Dex + 4 Dodge + 3 Essence)/2 = 5
Parry DV: 4 : (3 Dex + 3 Melee + 1 Defense)/2 = 4

Active Charms: (Dread Lord's Demeanor, enhanced with Heart-Stopping Mien and Killing Words (If the latter is allowed)




Essence
Personal: 16/16
Peripheral: 12/35 (8 Committed to artifacts, 9 previously spent on charms, 7 spent this round)

Willpower: 5/7 (-3 from stuff, +1 from stunt. 6 if I can't use Killing Words Technique)

[The Demented One]

Mulberry's silken lashes rain down on Little Beam, but he catches them with one spin of his staff, the webbing clinging to its bamboo tip as he neatly wraps it around with a deft flick of his puissant wrists. Grim's countless horrors assail the godling on all sides, but he seems unmoved to terror by any of them, not even letting his eyes stray to glimpse at the countless corpse-visions.

But all this is mere prelude, for Grim's dark starry eye has seen the truth of Little Beam. The Moonshadow sees him as the Neverborn whisper, a shaft of brilliant, painful light, with four arms of flame emerging from the radiance, clutching hateful tokens of wrath. As the shining agony coalesces into shape and body, brow and body of flame emerging from that unbearable brilliance, he sees a violet sigil blaze into being upon its brow, the sign of endings. The violet bleeds from the sigil, and where the flowing light touches the flame-god it is stillness and corpse-flesh and carrion and rot and there are thousands of tiny mouths eating away from inside and they are children, bulbous eyes bulging from too-small sockets of infant babies lifeless and hungry, a thousand gnashing maws ripping away at the flesh of the god from within, devouring his light, drinking the sun, all things shall end in darkness, all things shall end in blood, all things shall end all things shall end all things shall end!

But these dark prophecies are nothing to Little Beam. Still standing as a bulwark between Chaya and the five horrors before him, he spins his staff in an unerring circle, bringing it down on Carnifex with force that no mere blade can knock aside, force that can only be avoided with desperate escape. The Daybreak sees the singular force of the first blow aimed at him, and not even the deftness of his hands can deflect it. His movements are precise and meticulous, as if calculating the attack at at times even predicting it's exact path. He is not dodging with his feet, he is dodging with his mind. The first attack catches a portion of the Carnifex's invulnerable arm and sparks with bright pyre-flame, wrenching the soulsteel in its bony joint, threatening to snap the cage of bones that holds Carnifex together.

The Daybreak lets out a breath slowly and turns on his heel as the weapon spins and comes at him again. The Hollow Carnifex suddenly stabs his weapon into the ground and drops backwards to avoid a blow to the neck and catches himself on his three arms, giving him an appearance resembling a twisted metal spider draped in black cloth. Each of his three arms seem too long and bend in too many places to be considered at all natural, but work wonders to catch the Deathknight's fall. Little Beam's staff swoops harmlessly over the prostrate Abyssal, his godly strength wasted–but too his grim satisfaction, he sees the loose white tips of ribs poking through Carnifex's flesh, the damage of his first blow.

From behind Little Beam, his flameslinging companion draws up both wands, fully loaded, and discharges them, letting loose streamers of crimson. One gout of flame flies back at Scion, returning her own fire, while the other is shot directly upwards, like a candle to the moth that is Mulberry. Patterns of essence shimmer within the flame like a brilliant white mandala, spelling out the justice of the sun. Mulberry effortlessly wings away from the inferno, soft wings beating back the driving fire. Sable leaps to one side, angling her movement to keep Little Beam between herself and Chaya. Her anima streams to follow her, the black cracks in the world sealing where she was and reopening around her as she moves, making it that much more difficult to trace her exact position. Chaya's shot goes wild, scorching the earth of the fortress, but nothing more.


Battle Joined

Tick 6: Carnifex, Kohl, Sable
Tick 7: Mulberry, Grim
Tick 10: Little Beam, Chaya


Grim

2-die stunt to enhance Whispers, 4m or 1wp

You can use Killing Words to enhance Dread Lord's Demeanor; it counts as unnatural mental influence.

DV -1

Carnifex

2-die stunt, 4m or 1wp

8 levels of bashing damage

Sable

1-die stunt, 2m

Tick 6: Carnifex, Kohl, Sable

[Naquadah]

The whorl of color and shadow near the ceiling suddenly shatters like a painted mirror cast against a wall, and the terrible scraping noise ceases with it. The motes of the light show explode and dissipate into the dark, dank air. The whirling vortex of dead colors re-forms within an instant behind and to the left of Little Beam, underneath Chaya's outstretched arms. Kohl's head and torso burst silently from the kaleidoscopic morass like a man erupting from a barrel of paisley tar. Crimson blood pours from the black, empty wound of Kohl's caste mark, tracing parallel lines around his nose and dripping from his chin. Essence-formed crows explode like shattered crystal goblets with every inch that he moves. And yet the air around him is silent. Kohl grips It Holds Enthralled with both hands, thrusting and attempting to plunge the sharp chisel end of his weapon into Little Beam's side, angled to drive the weapon up and under the godling's ribcage, and turns his head to flash Chaya a wicked, blood-stained grin. As his weapon presses in, he already seems to be fading back into the storm of light and shattered birds that is his anima.

Kohl is flurrying a miscellaneous attempt to re-establish surprise and an attack with the chisel end of It Holds Enthralled.

Reestablish surprise: spending 4m Peripheral for Just Another Branch Deceit
[roll0] + 5 successes (2 from being obscured from senses as per Reestablishing Surprise rules, 3 from Just Another Branch Deceit)

Attack with It Holds Enthralled, chisel end:
[roll1] + 1 success (spending 1 Willpower)
Damage +6L (piercing)


Dodge DV 4, Parry DV 4

Soak 7B/7L, Hardness 0B/0L

Health Levels
-0 [ ]
-1 [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
-2 [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
-4 [ ]
X [ ]

Willpower 5/6

Personal Essence 15/15

Peripheral Essence 14/36

Active Charm Effects:


Just Another Branch Deceit: add 3 successes to an attempt to re-establish surprise


Crystal Chameleon Form: -2e to all attacks made against the character; character always meets the prerequisites to re-establish surprise in combat.



Ominous Portent Method: removes the unexpected quality from an incoming attack or effect, so long as the character's Resonance is less than (10 - Essence rating)



Soulsteel hearthstone bracers: opponents' soak decreased by 2B/2L

[AmberVael]

Sable

The essence of all those converged here stream around Sable. She sees animas begin to flare, accompanied by the violent actions of those whose power they begin to reflect. Fire spews across the battlefield, and wounds have begun to show themselves- from the blackened skin of Beam, to the showing ribs of Carnifex. Blow by blow, the vicious scene builds upon itself, becoming increasingly more grand.

And increasingly more dark.

Though they might try to rationalize it, this destruction and violence, even when in the hands of Little Beam, served the purpose of the Void. The resonating emotions and intent, fueled by essence, carried out the fate written in the Underworld's black stars.

Sable reveled in it, and fed on it, adding to it willingly. She spins the feeling to her own purposes, coiling the darkness around her weapon, streaming essence into it and refining its dark glory. As if it were a dance, she waits for her moment, then responds to Little Beam's actions. He brings his staff down on Carnifex, then whirs it above his head, leaving an opening at his side. She fires in response, black essence coiling around her shot. The black radiance grows around her, rents in Creation shrieking open, twisting with torment as the violence and essence grows, compounding towards the purpose she serves.

Another shot with the repeater. Again with 8 motes spent on the second excellency. This time, however, no penalty for drawing it. So...
Dex+Archery+Accuracy (which I forgot last time, oh well). Should be 3+5+2 for ten dice.
[roll0]
And add four successes from the excellency.

10 lethal damage, speed five, woohoo. Four personal motes and four peripheral- I'm not going totemic just yet.

She's also gained back 6 motes total from her stunts, which is good.

Dodge DV 4 (5-1), Parry DV 3 (4-1)

Soak: 4B/2L, Hardness: 0B/0L

Health Levels
-0 [ ]
-1 [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
-2 [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
-4 [ ]
X [ ]

Willpower: 7

Personal Essence: 14/16
Peripheral Essence: 44/55

Active Effects:

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

The necrosurgeon throws himself upward and catches his weapon swiftly, lifting it from the floor with a deep metal scraping sound. The momentum continues forward and Carnifex swings his sword at the God-Blood, belching out in his deep voice and in skytongue, "Schweinehund!"
In the very same instant that his foot slams into the ground before him, the toothed sword digs deep into the flesh. Suddenly Carnifex's eyes flare as he spills black essence into his weapon and after one quick jolt of all the blades that line the weapon, they spring to life moving in a blackened blur and spraying Little Beam's blood like a living geyser. Crimson gouts and flecks of bone are left in the weapon's trail when he pulls his sword out of him and holds it high above his head, then swings down again. The spinning teeth catching the enemy's arm, and the Carnifex aims to make the God-Blood from one whole into two halves.

"Mulberry! Fetch the coward that would flee a fate in my lab!" The Carnifex shouts out as he stares with cold, wide eyes at Little Beam. Some of the necrosurgeon's own blackened blood oozes from the corner of his mouth as he uses one of his spare arms to slip one of his ribs back into his flesh.

Reflexively committing 3 more motes into the weapon to make the chainsaw go, then spending 8 motes for both attacks for me First Melee Excellency.

Attack 1: [roll0]
Attack 2: [roll1]

Defenses
Dodge DV: 5
Parry DV: 6

Soak: 9B/10L

Hardness: 4B/4L

Health
-0 [/][/]
-1 [/][/][/][/][/]
-2 [/][ ][ ][ ]
-4 [ ]
X [ ]

Willpower: 6/6

Essence
Permanent: 3
Personal: 15/15
Peripheral: 8/36
Committed: 20

[The Demented One]

Sable's roiling blast of essence flies with full fury, but Little Beam dips beneath it like a fluttering swallow, leaving it to scorch the mud and dirt of the fortress's walls to warped ceramics. As he dodges, Carnifex comes up beside him, the whirling teeth of his goreripper a frantic cacophony–but the only blood that sprays from the god is in the necroscientist's fevered imagination, as Little Beam's bamboo staff proves more than sufficient to jam the gears of the soulsteel blade. Carnifex draws back his blade to deal out a second strike, but before he can manage, Little Beam takes the snake step. It's the kind of step a snake would take, if it knew martial arts. And had legs. It takes him far beyond Carnifex's reach, denying all hope of another blow. But unfortunately for Little Beam, all his dipping and dodging has left him perfectly open to an attack from a third side–and so it is that Kohl appears out of the shadows, and the tip of his soulsteel staff appears out of Little Beam's face, piercing clean through the side of his head and ripping out through the opposite cheek, with a tendon-snapping spray of blood. Chaya screams in horror at the sudden unseen foe, but Little Beam is resolute defiance.

Already he is slipping his tangled flesh off the soulsteel spear-point, bringing up his bamboo staff to knock the black metal stave from Kohl's own. The Deathknight's eyes flash with mirth and malice as he jerks his torso backward, urging his lower body forward. Silk rustles and shifts in a nauseating pattern of black and green, amplified by the whirling kaleidoscopic madness of his anima. Kohl’s caste mark is a charred circle, spraying a river of blood that catches and flicks from his hair, spattering the halls, floor, and Chaya with dark red, Essence-born drops of thick, foul blood. Kohl’s anima washes over Chaya, and all that she can see is whirling chunks of mirrored light, a bleak, sickening rainbow reflecting fractured images, broken here and there with flying globes of blood. He bends his back and twists, still spraying blood from his forehead, tucking one arm in and extending the other to deftly spin It Holds Enthralled from the path of Little Beam’s counterstroke–but in vain! Little Beam knocks the shaft of soulsteel from Kohl's hands, sending it clattering away!


Battle Joined

Tick 7: Mulberry, Grim
Tick 10: Little Beam, Chaya
Tick 11: Carnifex, Kohl, Sable

Kohl

2-die stunt, 4m or 1wp

DV -2

Sable

DV -1

Carnifex

DV -1

Tick 7: Mulberry, Grim

[WhiteKnight777]

Grim

Cackling, peal after peal of daemonic laughter spilling from his pallid lips, Grim moves forward, slipping around behind Little Beam like a shadow, striking like a serpent at the heels of the distracted warrior to buy his companions time. A cacophony of screams erupts from his blade, echoing the words bubbling up from its owner's lips as he attacks.


Gnawing maggot, worthless spawn
soon you'll all be dead and gone
chewing on the corpse-god's flesh
never knowing peace or rest

shadow of the father's light
imperfect, flawed, a walking blight
pain and doom to all you touch
death's sweet embrace is in your clutch




Simple attack roll here. Backstabbin'... [roll0]

Hardness: N/A
Soak: 1L/2B
Dodge DV: 5: ( 3 Dex + 4 Dodge + 3 Essence)/2 = 5
Parry DV: 4 : (3 Dex + 3 Melee + 1 Defense)/2 = 4

Active Charms: (Dread Lord's Demeanor, enhanced with Heart-Stopping Mien and Killing Words




Essence
Personal: 16/16
Peripheral: 12/35 (8 Committed to artifacts, 9 previously spent on charms, 7 spent this round)

Willpower: 6/7 (-3 from stuff, 1 from stunt. )

[GryffonDurime]

Mulberry reevaluates her strategy, letting her feet scrape the tips of the wall of the fortress. Little Beam would shrug off her attacks if she tried to strike him again. A crumb of Lunar cruelty came to mind, one of the few lessons she took to heart: if you can not strike the foe's body, strike the foe's heart. A wicked smile came over Mulberry's slick white face like a slit of darkness over her white skin. Her eyes turned to Chaya and her hands practiced a quick shot. Silver essence erupted around her wrists and her anima burst to full glory, agitating the swarm of moths and staining them to inky black and dark purple.

The silver line flew from Mulberry's hand, aiming to wrap itself around Chaya's neck...and the instant it did? Mulberry would fly up, as fast as her wings could carry her.


Attack is as per a lasso...I'm assuming I can still use my Countless Lustrous Strands stats for it, as it was an upgrade to a basic functionality of Argent Weaver. It's aiming for her neck, too. And Mulberry is spending a Conviction channel. It's going to be an impromptu hanging.

5 Dex + 5 Int + 3 MA + 5 Conviction - 4 Called Shot = 14 Dice + 1 RLF + 4 Second Dex Successes

[roll0] + 5 Automatic Successes

Bloodied Mulberry
Dodge DV 6
Parry DV 4

Soak 5L/3B

Health
-0 [ ]
-1 [ ][ ][ ][ ]
-2 [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
-4 [ ]
X [ ]

Willpower 6/8
Essence:
-Personal: 18/18
-Peripheral: 24/43

Active Charm Effects:
-DBT (+1 Physical Attributes, Wings, Enhanced Sight, "Fur")
-Countless Lustrous Strands (Pew pew pew)
-Relentless Lunar Fury (+1 Auto Sux on Combat, enhanced Excellencies)
-Golden Tiger Stance (Negates 3 points of DV penalty)
-Anima Totemic (Formlock, but also a -1 external penalty to hit me)

[The Demented One]

Little Beam twists back as Grim dances behind him, deftly raising up the butt-end of his staff to deflect the manic jester's unsheathed steel...and fails. The blade's tip traces a jagged zig-zag of red across the god's back, notching his spine with the sickening sound of soulsteel on bone. But even worse, as the god struggles against his foe, he leaves Chaya undefended, unable to save her from the line of glistening silver that dangles down, the shimmering silver noose that coils around her neck. With a sudden jerk she is pulled aloft by Mulberry's webs, dangling choking in the air. Frantic fingers pull at the choker of silk that draws taut around her neck, to no avail.

"Chaya, no!" howls Little Beam, with delightful melodrama, his angst pleasing to the Neverborn. With one whirling blow of his staff he seeks to beat back his assailants, driving away Carnifex, Kohl, and Grim. Grim bends over backward with a sickening crack in a move that would break the spine of a mortal, ducking deep beneath the staff's course, but Kohl is not so lucky. He snaps his body forward into a roll under and in front of the swing, but finds himself caught with a bone-grinding blow to his neck, sending hairline fragments down the length of his collarbone. But the blow ends at Carnifex, his five-bladed hand lurching from the darkness of his cloak to catch it with all the cold, mechanical deftness he can muster. But Little Beam has no mind for his foes, running after Mulberry.

"I beg you, let her go! I will leave here, I will spare you, I will bow before you–but do not hurt her!" His voice is hot desperation, panic beyond even his power to restrain. Chaya wriggles and pulls against the noose around her neck, but to no avail.


Battle Joined

Tick 11: Carnifex, Kohl, Sable, Grim
Tick 12: Mulberry
Tick 15: Little Beam, Chaya


Grim

2-die stunt to attack, 4m or 1wp.
1-die stunt to defend, 2m.

DV -1

Mulberry

3-die stunt, 6m or 1wp

DV -1

Carnifex

1-die stunt, 2m

Kohl

You take 4 levels of bashing damage at the end of Little Beam's staff.

Tick 11: Carnifex, Kohl, Sable, Grim

[WhiteKnight777]

Grim

Grim raises one hand thoughtfully to his lips, looking around at his compatriots with a dramatic wink.

"The argent light bends before the shadow... shall the nightlings dance the tune of sun, or snuff out its heart... hrmm... but to have the light in one's hand, to mold it, to break it, to shape into a shadow of the light is a sweetling tune indeed... I could dance to that. Aye, I could"

leaping swiftly, he places his blade against Little Beam's spine once more, speaking in sibilant tones. "Stay your course, o son of sun, 'till shadows arrive at consensus. We whisper of sweetling's fate, and the light'd best listen close."

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

The Carnifex manages a twisted, lipless grin across the stretched skin of his face. The horrible grinding from his active weapon penetrates it's way into the background as a vermin might through living flesh, he holds his hand out and speaks with dark amusement. "Oh but the little godling does have a weakness, a chink in the armor that leads right to his heart. Perhaps you should armored her as well as you have yourself with that little stick of yours. Would you really face what we have to serve, just for a meaningless... blink of an eye that is your pathetic love?" He chortled, trying his best to break him apart, letting sorrow open up his defenses as well as a hole in his armor. "Or is it lust? Have you bedded with her yet? I'm certain you have, little thing like that." He moved his hand to gesture to her, but truly is pointing to an opening in his defenses. "How many years older than her are you? Such a thing to take a girls innocence so soon after birth. How depraved you must be, Little. Beam."
The entire time he locks eyes with the god, never blinking. All the while he moves his two spare hands in order to move the chess pieces that are his Circle around for an attack against the foe. Creating weaknesses and exposing them to his allies. Blood drips from his mouth and his robe as he speaks, but bleeding is not as accurate a word as oozing.

Coordinated attack. Pouring 6 motes into my First War Excellency.
Edit: Also forgot to mention I'm including the entire Circle except Mulberry because she's clinching.

War+Cha: [roll0]

Defenses
Dodge DV: 5
Parry DV: 6

Soak: 9B/10L

Hardness: 4B/4L

Health
-0 [/][/]
-1 [/][/][/][/][/]
-2 [/][ ][ ][ ]
-4 [ ]
X [ ]

Willpower: 6/6

Essence
Permanent: 3
Personal: 15/15
Peripheral: 4/36
Committed: 20

[Naquadah]

Color explodes in his eyes as the staff hits him in the back of the neck, and the stining hiss of the Neverborn's disappointment deafens his ears for an instant. Kohl’s roll turns from practiced acrobatics to a clumsy dive as the staff blow sends him sprawling. He hits the ground once, bounces, and manages to land again in a low, pained crouch. He blinks and exhales heavily, glancing up through the insane light of his anima to see the scene unfold before him. A wicked grin plays across his face as he straightens, then twists and loudly pops his back in several places.

“Quite the swing you have there, godling. You protect your body very well. Ah, but your emotions…you are not hard, and they are not armored, and now, you feel them slowly flayed before you. Fitting,” he grins acrimoniously, walking to retrieve his weapon, but giving Little Beam’s staff a wide berth. "I wonder how long she can hold her breath, or if the silkmoth intends to play the spider and deliver unto us a feast?" Kohl licks the blood gushing past the corners of his lips. The soulsteel stave back in his hand, he assumes a defensive crouch, staff held chisel-first at Little Beam, and waits. Blood dribbles from his chin and drops to the dirty floor with soft plops.

I think this is a Miscellaneous action to retrieve weapon, but I'm not sure if we're still in combat time. My intent is to Guard if possible, but if not, just the miscellaneous action.


Dodge DV 5, Parry DV 5

Soak 7B/7L, Hardness 0B/0L

Health Levels
-0 [/]
-1 [/][/][/][ ][ ]
-2 [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
-4 [ ]
X [ ]

Willpower 5/6

Personal Essence 15/15

Peripheral Essence 18/36 (+4 from last stunt)

Active Charm Effects:



Crystal Chameleon Form: -2e to all attacks made against the character; character always meets the prerequisites to re-establish surprise in combat.

Ominous Portent Method: removes the unexpected quality from an incoming attack or effect, so long as the character's Resonance is less than (10 - Essence rating)

Soulsteel hearthstone bracers: opponents' soak decreased by 2B/2L

[AmberVael]

Sable

"Enough."
Sable says, her voice rippling with scorn as she looks around at her compatriots.
"Your jeering voices do no good for us, and only serve to provoke him further."

She moves forwards to stand at Little Beam's side, while Grim threatens him with a blade. Her own weapon is now held casually ready to be used, but not threatening.
"You trespassed on our lands and threatened us even when we offered you sanctuary and hospitality. We warned you of the outcome of this, and yet you persisted. But... we are not without mercy."
A smile forms across her lips, but it is not a comforting smile. It is silk cloaking barbed wire- a veneer of kindness over deadly snares.
"Hand over your weapon and prostrate yourself before us, and I will give you my word that she will go unharmed."

Sable extends her hand to receive Little Beam's staff if he chooses to accept her request.

[The Demented One]

With Little Beam outflanked on all fronts by his own failure, it is little matter for the circle to slip around him, all four of them ringing him with ready steel as Mulberry flutters above with her slowly strangling prisoner. As Sable's offer rings out above the mockery of the others, there is a shimmer of weakness in his eyes, a soft uncertainty that will be the breaking of him. But not yet. "No. I will cast down my arms, and I will even bow to you, most base and most low, but first I must see Chaya safe. Deliver her down, and I will surrender. But not until then."


Battle Joined

Tick 12: Mulberry
Tick 15: Little Beam, Chaya
Tick 16: Carnifex, Kohl, Sable, Grim


Carnifex

2-die stunt, 4m or 1wp

Tick 12: Mulberry

[GryffonDurime]

Mulberry pulls the line taut and then flutters down just enough to let Chaya's toes barely touch the ground. The girl takes one curt, shallow breath and is jerked up again as the Lunar soars anew.

"This is not a negotiation, Little Beam," Mulberry says, repeating the process so that Chaya ends up taking one breath for every three or so. She also does her best to move both herself and the prey further from Little Beam. Sometimes, you really have to sell the desperation.

"All necks abhor a noose, godling. Even golden necks. Do you know how much pressure it takes for the mortal neck to snap? I do!" Mulberry proclaims rather gleefully as she keeps Chaya aloft just a second or two longer than normal. When Mulberry lowers her again, there's an explosion of coughing. "Surrender first, Chaya second."

A second line spun, Mulberry casts it off for Chaya's waist, aiming to increase her leverage. She knows better than most that a neck will not hold forever.


Mulberry is not a nice lady.

Second Lustrous Strands attempt, just throwing another line. Not a called shot, she just wants a better hold.

5 Dex + 5 Int + 3 MA + 1 Auto Sux + 3 Sux Excellency
[roll0] + 4 Automatic Successes

Bloodied Mulberry
Dodge DV 6
Parry DV 4

Soak 5L/3B

Health
-0 [B]
-1 [B][B][B][B]
-2 [B][B][B][B][B][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
-4 [ ]
X [ ]

Willpower 6/8
Essence:
-Personal: 18/18
-Peripheral: 24/43

Active Charm Effects:
-DBT (+1 Physical Attributes, Wings, Enhanced Sight, "Fur")
-Countless Lustrous Strands (Pew pew pew)
-Relentless Lunar Fury (+1 Auto Sux on Combat, enhanced Excellencies)
-Golden Tiger Stance (Negates 3 points of DV penalty)
-Anima Totemic (Formlock, but also a -1 external penalty to hit me)

[The Demented One]

Little Beam watches Chaya struggling helplessly in the twisted Lunar's grips, her eyes bulging with blood. The staff of bamboo clatters mournfully to the ground, as tears fall from Little Beam's eyes. "No. No. NO!" he bellows. And then he is light, light, a thousand different crimsons and violets and golds of kaleidoscopic light. It is Kohl's technique, the Crystal Chameleon Form, stolen by Little Beam's watchful attitude and quick adaptation. He disappears into the resplendence of light that radiates from him–and when he reappears, it is with his fist in Carnifex's jaw, a solid haymaker that drops the Daybreak to his feet. But the god is not content to let him lie–he seizes him by an ankle, and then the two both disappear into the kaleidoscope.

Before Bloodied Mulberry even has time to think, before her newfound fractal eyes can pick out Little Beam, there is a meaty thud, and Carnifex collapses into her, flung headlong by the sun-prince's mighty thews. Mulberry's moth-wings crumple under the weight of flesh and soulsteel, though with a desperate push she is able to stay aloft, despite the crushing blow of her own mate. Carnifex falls to the floor, bewildered but still able to catch himself, soulsteel arms splaying out in a grotesque handstand. The blaze of light dims and fades, revealing Little Beam, standing alone and defiant. "This is my surrender, demons. You want to take Chaya from me? See if you can!"


Battle Joined

Tick 16: Carnifex, Kohl, Sable, Grim
Tick 17: Mulberry
Tick 20: Little Beam, Chaya

Carnifex

2 levels of bashing damage.

Mulberry

1-die stunt, 2m

10 levels of bashing damage

DV -1

Tick 16: Carnifex, Kohl, Sable, Grim

[AmberVael]

Sable

There is a moment when the fractal pattern collapses; a moment where it all folds back inwards towards it source. It takes a sharp eye to see it, but at that instant, it pinpoints its center like a bullseye does to a target.
A single click emanates from Sable's repeater as the chamber spins, readying the next round.
She points towards the center of the pattern, and as the maddening kaleidoscope is drawn back into Beam's position fully, she has aimed directly at him. As soon as his mouth opens- she has fired.

A gout of smoke whirls artfully from the barrel, mirroring the sudden horror that bursts round Sable. All the fissures and cracks in the air are now as nothing before the yawning maw behind her- a horrendous rent that shows the fullness of her anima and power. It almost seems to loom forwards in response to the shot, ready to seize Little Beam should he fall.

Another shot, same deal as before. 8 peripheral motes on second excellency, which will make her anima go totemic, unless I'm mistaken.

[roll0]
+4 successes.
9 total, I believe.

Dodge DV 4 (5-1), Parry DV 3 (4-1)

Soak: 4B/2L, Hardness: 0B/0L

Health Levels
-0 [ ]
-1 [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
-2 [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
-4 [ ]
X [ ]

Willpower: 7

Personal Essence: 12/16
Peripheral Essence: 36/55

Active Effects:

[Naquadah]

Kohl grits his teeth as Little Beam uses his trick and erupts into light...a light stolen from Kohl’s own mad nightmares, a light that burns too bright and alive for this shadowland. For an instant, his mind is panicked. How did he do that? Kohl's hands gradually feel the chill of the soulsteel; he restores himself to lucidity. He sees Carnifex get slugged and disappear, only to reappear as a darkling comet launched at Mulberry. He watches Little Beam as the god follows through, as the god keeps his eye on the beloved girl. And he smiles, knowing now the best way to attack this self-righteous bastard.

"Tricky, tricky firefly," he murmurs. "For all your bluster about being son of the Most High, you really have no qualms about dishonor, do you? Ah well...impersonation is the highest form of flattery. Best if you had never started this argument and just taken us up for a mug of wine."

Kohl sees Little Beam stare towards Chaya, borne further aloft by Mulberry despite his best efforts. And as despair shrouds Little Beam's blazing light, Kohl lunges forward in a blur of silk and blood. As Sable fires a necrotic round into the god, Kohl dashes under and then alongside it, aiming low, letting the showiness of the fire divert ittle Beam's attention. Kohl focuses on the silhouette in the broken light. Little Beam's reds and golds muddle themselves against the blacks and grays and greens of Kohl's anima. Indigo crows explode against golden mirrors and tear at the flesh of sunbeams.

As Little Beam is engulfed by the blaze from Sable’s weapon, Kohl closes the final distance, charging in a low, feral crouch, leaving a trail of blood in his wake. At the last instant, Kohl reverses the staff and drives its blunt end into the scorched ground just short of Little Beam, jumping and tucking his legs. It Hold Enthralled wails in protest as it bends and then straightens, vaulting Kohl up into the air and over the scorched godling. Kohl arches and contorts in midair, bringing the full force of his will and desire to bear on this strike. It must succeed. It cannot fail. The staff itself veritably screams for blood. Kohl twists to plunge the pointed end down toward the space between Little Beam's neck and shoulder, striking for the god's heart.


Jump attack (Speed 4), channeling Conviction:
[roll0]
Damage: 6L (piercing) + extra successes

Dodge DV 5, Parry DV 5

Soak 7B/7L, Hardness 0B/0L

Health Levels
-0 [/]
-1 [/][/][/][ ][ ]
-2 [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
-4 [ ]
X [ ]

Willpower 4/6

Personal Essence 15/15

Peripheral Essence 18/36 (+4 from last stunt)

Active Effects:


Coordinated Attack: -4 to opponent's DV
Crystal Chameleon Form: -2e to all attacks made against the character; character always meets the prerequisites to re-establish surprise in combat.
Ominous Portent Method: removes the unexpected quality from an incoming attack or effect, so long as the character's Resonance is less than (10 - Essence rating)
Soulsteel hearthstone bracers: opponents' soak decreased by 2B/2L

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

The Carnifex rolls back onto his feet from his unnatural tripod position with spinning blade still in the grasp of his clockwork claw. His eyes have not yet contorted to rage, if they are even capable of that, but his lipless maw twitches with fury ever so slightly. He understood the injury his mate may have taken when he was hurled at her but surgeries could wait...

He watched as his companions all lashed out at the same time, following up on his coordination. He vaulted forward to rip away at the God's exposed torso, he could see the veins and arteries moving blood through the body. Where each one was, where they lead and most importantly... where they would be cut. As he moved, with every third step one of his arms clanged across the ground, giving him the appearance of a grotesque spider.
He slams his feet down in front of him, lurching forward like a gargoyle with two arms handing down at his sides and his dark blood sliding down the Soulsteel limbs and to the ground. His third arm scythes down from above, gripping the spinning-toothed weapon tightly. He aimed to rip through the bastard child's of the Sun's heart. The sound of the chain grinds on sickeningly, and the black anima banner continues to lurch from the Carnifex's body like a harrowing plethora of claws and smoke.

Just a melee attack, and putting a Savage Shade Style into it. Only 1 mote.

Attack: [roll0]

Defenses
Dodge DV: 5
Parry DV: 6

Soak: 9B/10L

Hardness: 4B/4L

Health
-0 [/][/]
-1 [/][/][/][/][/]
-2 [/][/][/][ ]
-4 [ ]
X [ ]

Willpower: 6/6

Essence
Permanent: 3
Personal: 15/15
Peripheral: 7/36
Committed: 20

[WhiteKnight777]

Grim

The fool appeared to be in no rush. While his companions struck their savage, hateful blows, he gathered himself. His Urd-Born eye shone, pulsing with unholy light - emerald greens, vivid purple-blacks and night-sky blues, a rainbow of the void. He approached Little beam as if taking a stroll in a garden, now and then clicking his heels together, capering side to side, or humming a little snatch of a tune under his breath. He grabbed the godling by the head, forcing his gaze to lock with Grim's, a manic smile on his face as he whispered quietly

"Corpse-eyes see clearly in the void. See all the little deaths, as the true one approaches. Rejoice, rejoice, Oblivion calls home the wayward sheep."

He said, sliding his soulsteel blade up under Little Beam's ribs, watching for the light to leave the godling's eyes, and letting him stare into the horrors that awaited him. No hope, no light, not even an eternity of torment - only the slow, cold extinction that would follow for him, and for all things.

Simple attack roll here. [roll0]

Hardness: N/A
Soak: 1L/2B
Dodge DV: 5: ( 3 Dex + 4 Dodge + 3 Essence)/2 = 5
Parry DV: 4 : (3 Dex + 3 Melee + 1 Defense)/2 = 4

Active Charms: (Dread Lord's Demeanor, enhanced with Heart-Stopping Mien and Killing Words




Essence
Personal: 16/16
Peripheral: 16/35 (8 Committed to artifacts, 16 previously spent on charms, 4 gained from stunt)

Willpower: 6/7 (-3 from stuff, 1 from stunt. )

[The Demented One]

Little Beam's defiance is met with its rightful reward. The first blow to fall comes from Sable, her inferno engulfing the god in a wreath of flame. As he flails at the clinging fire, trying to beat it out where it scorches his soft white eyes, Grim and Kohl ease his suffering with a vise of soulsteel, the sharp tips of their blades closing in on either side, bursting through skin and carving bone. Not killing blows, but wounds not easily dealt with. And then comes Carnifex, the soulsteel teeth of his blade singing agony, and with one fell swoop he carves up through Little Beam's chest, letting his goreripper just barely kiss Little Beam's carotid, loosing a hemmoraging spray of internal bleeding. The god sways on his feet, falling to the ground–and his hand lands on his staff! He pushes himself up with the shaft of bamboo, driving its tip into the necroscientist's hand to disarm him. Carnifex manages to spin the blade in one hand, for a moment not even grasping it and then catching it to send it to the ground in a flurry of metal sparks. Little Beam vaults back to a fighting stance, warily holding his staff like a wall against you.


Battle Joined

Tick 17: Mulberry
Tick 20: Grim, Kohl, Little Beam, Chaya
Tick 21: Carnifex, Sable

Carnifex

2-die stunt, 4m or 1wp
1-die stunt, 2m

DV -1

Kohl

2-die stunt, 4m or 1wp

DV -1

Sable
2-die stunt, 4m or 1wp

DV -1

Grim
2-die stunt, 4m or 1wp

DV -1

Tick 17: Mulberry

[GryffonDurime]

Mulberry satisfies herself with a simpler course of actions: using her newfound leverage, she pulls Chaya off the ground deftly, keeping hold of the neck while leaving the majority of the pressure to her chest. She flies higher still, hoping to make it clear that another attack on her will likely do more to harm Chaya as they hover quite a ways above the ground. She waits, compound eyes unblinking, for another attack. She will not be caught unawares again.


Chaya's guarding and flying up.
Bloodied Mulberry
Dodge DV 6
Parry DV 4

Soak 5L/3B

Health
-0 [b]
-1 [b][b][b][b]
-2 [b][b][b][b][b][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
-4 [ ]
X [ ]

Willpower 6/8
Essence:
-Personal: 18/18
-Peripheral: 24/43

Active Charm Effects:
-DBT (+1 Physical Attributes, Wings, Enhanced Sight, "Fur")
-Countless Lustrous Strands (Pew pew pew)
-Relentless Lunar Fury (+1 Auto Sux on Combat, enhanced Excellencies)
-Golden Tiger Stance (Negates 3 points of DV penalty)
-Anima Totemic (Formlock, but also a -1 external penalty to hit me)

[Naquadah]

Tearing his weapon free from the god’s flesh, Kohl lands on his toes and instantly springs away, darting outside the attack range of Little Beam’s spinning staff. He whirls the staff, sending chunks of bloody divinity spraying around the yard, and brings the chisel to his lips. His tongue snakes out to taste the blood of a god, and he smiles maliciously. "Your vintage would make an exceedingly fine wine. Sparkly, with the aftertaste of self-righteous arrogance. Ghosts would pay top jade for this, oh yes, and worth every obol."

Noticing that attacking as one made it more difficult for the god to counter the Circle, Kohl takes a defensive posture, keeping the blunt end of his staff aligned like the dark shadow to Little Beam’s flowing bamboo rod. Kohl begins to closely examine Little Beam’s positioning and style, ready to attack when his Circle can bring its full simultaneous strength to bear again.


Taking an Guard action against Little Beam, plan to abort when we can do another coordinated attack, which should be on the next tick. Recover 4m from the stunt.

Dodge DV 6, Parry DV 6

Soak 7B/7L, Hardness 0B/0L

Health Levels
-0 [/]
-1 [/][/][/][ ][ ]
-2 [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
-4 [ ]
X [ ]

Willpower 4/6

Personal Essence 15/15

Peripheral Essence 22/36

Active Effects:

Crystal Chameleon Form: -2e to all attacks made against the character; character always meets the prerequisites to re-establish surprise in combat.
Ominous Portent Method: removes the unexpected quality from an incoming attack or effect, so long as the character's Resonance is less than (10 - Essence rating)
Soulsteel hearthstone bracers: opponents' soak decreased by 2B/2L

[WhiteKnight777]

Grim

Grim continues his deadly, capering dance, tiny bells each ringing out a mournful, discordant tone with each step he takes as he watches for another opening. His own fighting style is like his mind - shifting, chaotic, unpredictable, but possessed of a certain underlying order, and a cold inevitability. He speaks in a lilting, sing-song voice, his constant jabbering meant either to annoy or to illuminate - or perhaps both.

And then he was silent - there was nothing except the shadows as he slipped into them like a lover's embrace, waiting for his fellows to attack.

Waiting to participate in a coordinated attack, attempting a Stealth action to catch Little Beam unawares.

[roll0]

Hardness: N/A
Soak: 1L/2B
Dodge DV: 5: ( 3 Dex + 4 Dodge + 3 Essence)/2 = 5
Parry DV: 4 : (3 Dex + 3 Melee + 1 Defense)/2 = 4

Active Charms: (Dread Lord's Demeanor, enhanced with Heart-Stopping Mien and Killing Words




Essence
Personal: 16/16
Peripheral: 16/35 (8 Committed to artifacts, 16 previously spent on charms, 4 gained from stunt)

Willpower: 7/7 (1 from stunt. )

[The Demented One]

Chaya gasps in Mulberry's noose, arcing her back in a desperate attempt to breathe. As the Lunar hovers upwards, the silken cord draws tight, eliciting a few precious drops of scarlet from the girl's dusty Southern skin, dangling like rubies. Little Beam's eyes meet hers, the golden dawn of his gaze choked by a dusk of tears, tears of failure. His assault had been one last desperate attempt at bringing down her captor...and it had failed. He does not even look at Kohl, warding off attack with his shaft of soulsteel, or at shadow-checkered Grim (indeed, he does not even seem to see Grim at all).

Instead, he turns to Sable, Sable and her firewand, a perfect flame to light an unwanted moth. He lashes out with his staff like a flicking serpent's tongue, oh-so-gently kissing the flamepiece's barrel with the tip of his bamboo rod. The Deathknight tries to keep out of range of Little Beam's staff, slipping in and out of the flickering effects of her anima. As a particularly large seam in reality whirls around her, she slips her repeater between her hands and then–no, he's seen through her sleight! With a gentle flick he knocks the wand from her hands, catching it in his own. He turns to Mulberry, raising the firewand high.

"Burn, demon!" he yells, unleashing a wave of scorching flame. If only it struck her, if only it brought the demon-moth down. It doesn't. Mulberry swings Chaya like a pendulum, incidentally throttling her as she builds momentum. With a flick of her wings, she floats past the flame-gout, leaving Little Beam to his despair.


Battle Joined

Tick 21: Carnifex, Sable
Tick 23: Mulberry, Kohl
Tick 25: Grim, Little Beam, Chaya


Grim

2-die stunt, 4m or 1wp

Mulberry

1-die stunt, 2m

Tick 21: Carnifex, Sable

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

The Carnifex watches as the god attempts another display of heroics, and for most of Little Beam's assault, the necrosurgeon is calm. He moves casually but swiftly to where Chaya dangles like a gobbet of raw meat in front of a dog. He locks eyes with the girl and as per the usual, does not blink. He swings the arm that holds his deadly weapon up and back as if in a position to strike, but holds it there motionless. A second arm reaches out from his robes and catches both of her wrists mid-air, between long, spidery fingers. The next instant his third arm reaches from the shadows that is The Carnifex and ensnares her ankles as well. He pulls all four limbs taught, rendering the girl helpless for just an instant, and it's all he needs.
Never moving his gaze from the girl's eyes, he shouts in his deep, gravelly voice. "Little Beam!" Once the god's attention is caught he knows that to tear the heart of a god out, you need not reach in and grab it. You must lure it out.

"You made me do this, Little Beam."

He swings down in a wide arc anyone with less joints than he would find an impossible act. The whirring saw-teeth of his sword all catch flesh and in a display of glorious crimson, The Carnifex leaves Chaya little more than a blood soaked head and torso. Dripping with blood, the crimson spray having drenched the weapon, arms, face and robes of Carnifex, he looked up and in a sickening instant, locked eyes with Little Beam.

4-attack flurry to hack away at her limbs.

Attack 1: [roll0]
Attack 2: [roll1]
Attack 3: [roll2]
Attack 4: [roll3]

[AmberVael]

Sable

Sable practically snarls at this turn of events. This wasn't going at all like she wanted, but she'd make do...

She leaps back from Little Beam and starts twisting the powers of the void around her, working on a spell. If he wanted to come attack her, fine, but Chaya would most certainly die... and the others would be able to stab him in the back. She doubted he'd make that choice.

Starting to shape so I can cast Bone Puppet Dance.

Soak: 4B/2L, Hardness: 0B/0L

Health Levels
-0 [ ]
-1 [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
-2 [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
-4 [ ]
X [ ]

Willpower: 7

Personal Essence: 16/16
Peripheral Essence: 36/55

Active Effects:

[The Demented One]

"..."

Little Beam falls to his knees as he witnesses the depravity of the Hollow Carnifex of the Unclean Legion. With one jagged stroke of his goreripper, he saws through tendons and bone, shredding through tender muscles and ligaments and grinding down the girl's bones until they snap. Chaya's arms and legs, severed from her torso, fall to the ground, splattering Little Beam with her warm gore. The girl screams in agony, bloody stumps flailing and spurting blood. Wordless pain floods the fortress, and it is the breaking of Little Beam's heart. The swaying torso that is Chaya looks on him with desperation in her eyes, and he is powerless to save her.


Battle Joined

Tick 23: Mulberry, Kohl
Tick 25: Grim, Little Beam, Chaya
Tick 26: Carnifex, Sable


Carnifex

3-die stunt, 6m or 1wp

DV -4

Sable

DV -2

Tick 23: Mulberry, Kohl

[GryffonDurime]

Mulberry sighs, shrugging lightly. The silvered webs slip from her hands and the remaining half of Chaya falls to the ground with a splatter, so much discarded meat. She laces her fingers together and compresses a small pearl of essence, letting it run along the lines of her palm and the curve of her digits until it's a sleek net, which she aims for Little Beam...


Web Attack on the Little Beam guy person.

[roll0] + 5 Automatic Successes thanks to the Dex Excellency

Bloodied Mulberry
Dodge DV 6
Parry DV 4

Soak 5L/3B

Health
-0 [b]
-1 [b][b][b][b]
-2 [b][b][b][b][b][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
-4 [ ]
X [ ]

Willpower 6/8
Essence:
-Personal: 16/18
-Peripheral: 12/43

Active Charm Effects:
-DBT (+1 Physical Attributes, Wings, Enhanced Sight, "Fur")
-Countless Lustrous Strands (Pew pew pew)
-Relentless Lunar Fury (+1 Auto Sux on Combat, enhanced Excellencies)
-Golden Tiger Stance (Negates 3 points of DV penalty)
-Anima Totemic (Formlock, but also a -1 external penalty to hit me)

[Naquadah]

Whispers fill Little Beam’s ears, numbed by grief though they are. Chiding whispers, gloating whispers, whispers that ooze with fake sympathy and glorify the power of the dead and the foolishness of those who oppose it. “You could have saved her.” “Things needed not end like this.” “Your hubris caused this to happen.” “You’ve crippled her, mutilated her, all for nothing.” “You should never have demanded.” “You violated our hospitality and this is your just reward.” “You brought her here to this terrible end.” “You and you alone betrayed her.” “What would your father think, ruining his prized squire like this?” “We are agony, and your light is nothing to us.” “Give up.” “Give in.” “Let the shadows numb your ache.”

Dozens of rasping voices echo in the air, the shadows contorting into scene after scene of historic betrayals. The whispers are thick and cloying, masking the soft patter of Kohl’s moccasins against the dead ground. He holds the deathly fan across his mouth, and its surface plays with the horrors echoing in the air. His mouth moves, but none can see it, yet the words echo all around. With each step, a new horror plays out before Little Beam, until they coalesce all around him, rotating and glowing with the green-black flames of the Labyrinth: mothers casting their disfigured babies off of rocks, brides slitting their husbands’ throats on the wedding night, vassals betraying their kings to the rush of enemy cavalry, Guild factors poisoning each other for the most lucrative deal, a man sells his son to the Fair Folk to buy his wife a dress of pearls and gossamer. The images continue, a testament to the horror and selfishness of the human and divine condition.

And in that last final moment, Kohl vanishes in a sideways dodge taking him straight into a dim bank of shadow. The words and images continue to batter Little Beam as Kohl appears above and behind him, dropping like a bat onto a cricket. Kohl lands behind the god in the middle of a whisper, fan curling into a spike as the images begin to dissolve into the ephemera. Kohl drives the sharp point of his stave up and in, seeking to impale the god’s broken heart.


Kohl is flurrying an attempt to re-establish surprise and an attack. It Holds Enthralled is manifesting Haunting Apparition Trick.

Re-establish surprise:
[roll0] + 2 automatic successes

Impale attack, spending a Willpower to channel Compassion to bring an end to the god’s misery:
[roll1]
Damage 6L (piercing) + extra successes

Dodge DV 4, Parry DV 4

Soak 7B/7L, Hardness 0B/0L

Health Levels
-0 [/]
-1 [/][/][/][ ][ ]
-2 [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
-4 [ ]
X [ ]

Willpower 3/6

Personal Essence 15/15

Peripheral Essence 22/36

Active Effects:


Crystal Chameleon Form: -2e to all attacks made against the character; character always meets the prerequisites to re-establish surprise in combat.
Ominous Portent Method: removes the unexpected quality from an incoming attack or effect, so long as the character's Resonance is less than (10 - Essence rating)
Soulsteel hearthstone bracers: opponents' soak decreased by 2B/2L

[The Demented One]

The maimed and crippled thing that is Chaya hits the ground hard, the sound of splattering meat defiling the ears of all. Her eyes roll back as if in epilepsy, and her struggling limbless frame ceases to move, lost from consciousness, if still clinging to life. Little Beam walks towards her with a deliberate pace, not even noticing the attacks of others. As Mulberry flicks a lash of silk at him, he catches it in one fist without bothering to turn his glance to it, ripping the strand of essence with an absent-minded twist. Kohl appears from the shadows of his anima, piercing the god's flank with his bitter soulsteel barb, but Little Beam does not even seem to notice. He lifts up the limbless girl, mutilated sessile, and cradles her in one golden arm. With the other, he drives his staff into the earth, shattering its tip to created a jagged edge of splintered bamboo. He looks at Carnifex with absolute, unbridled hatred. "You will die for this."


Battle Joined

Tick 25: Grim, Little Beam, Chaya
Tick 26: Carnifex, Sable
Tick 27: Kohl
Tick 28: Mulberry


Kohl

2-die stunt, 4m or 1wp
1-die stunt, 2m

DV -2

Tick 25: Grim, Little Beam, Chaya

[WhiteKnight777]

Grim

Inspired by Kohl's assault on Little Beam's senses. he manic, capering figure of Grim looms up like a stick-thin shadow of despair - but instead of his blade, he holds a weapon of a different sort - His Sanxian. With a hauntingly discordant note, he begins to play once more, but instead of singing, he speaks only a single sentence, an evil gleam in his eyes. "For the withered flower, a dirge to soothe the golden' prince's soul..." he says in a bitterly mocking tone.

As he plays, images appear, swirling around Little Beam - ghostly images of Chaya. Chaya, cavorting with faceless figures, her features a mask of demonic glee. Chaya, mocking him with wicked laughter. Chaya, dead and dessicated, staring at him with empty, hateful eyes and pointing with skeletal fingers. Even as the woman lays dying in his arms, pallid, ghostly caricatures of her gather around Little Beam, engaged in every manner of debauchery, speaking in hideously haunting voices.

"I never loved you... I always hated you... Every time we were apart, there were others... so many others... foolish boy... I never wanted you... you took me through force... you killed me... you did this... you...you...you"

The song goes on - and so do the whispers. On all sides, Little Beam is surrounded by apparitions of his dying love, each one full of some fresh horror, some new accusation - each one diseased, defiled phantoms of deepest nightmare.


Performance... not sure if this is legitimate, but it seemed too awesome an idea to pass up. Haunting Apparition Trick, of course.

Second Performance Excellency for 4 bonus successes. 2 extra from the Sanxian, so 6 +...

[roll0]


Hardness: N/A
Soak: 1L/2B
Dodge DV: 5: ( 3 Dex + 4 Dodge + 3 Essence)/2 = 5
Parry DV: 4 : (3 Dex + 3 Melee + 1 Defense)/2 = 4

Active Charms: (Dread Lord's Demeanor, enhanced with Heart-Stopping Mien and Killing Words


Essence
Personal: 16/16
Peripheral: 12/35 (8 Committed to artifacts, 16 previously spent on charms, 4 gained from stunt, 8 spent this turn.)

Willpower: 7/7

[The Demented One]

Little Beam raises his staff high above Carnifex, the scarlet thorn of its broken tip aimed straight for his black heart. With a howl of rage he brings it down, his aim impossibly sure. The Daybreak has left himself dangerously open to attack with his bloody display, and know the godling brings down the full fury of the Unconquered Sun upon him, all but the Godspear in its force. It is a killing blow, and it is inevitable.

But as he brings down the spear, a coterie of phantoms swarm about him, the mocking vestiges brought forth by the Grim Foole's trickery. There is weakness in Little Beam's heart, and it is in his spear. His blow goes astray, shattering the earthworks of the wall where it strikes wildly. He chokes back a sob as he clutches Chaya close, desperately feeling for the timid drumming of her quiet heartbeat.


Battle Joined

Tick 26: Carnifex, Sable
Tick 27: Kohl
Tick 28: Mulberry
Tick 30: Grim, Little Beam, Chaya


Grim

2-die stunt, 4m or 1wp

DV -1

Tick 26: Carnifex, Sable

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

The Hollow Carnifex keeps his gaze locked onto Little Beam's eyes. He feels triumph, he has found his enemy's weakness. He takes a small step closer to the god and begun to speak quietly, "Do you understand exactly what you've done, Little Beam? Of course I assume you're more focused on wondering... exactly the same thing about me. Do you understand that when I removed all of that unfortunate girl's appendages the blame was not centered on any one man? We have both committed murder today, little god. The difference is I am well aware of it. You brought her here, right into the heart of a Shadowland where five Deathknights took residence. Maybe one of us alone would have been satisfactory, but no. You had to feed the ravenous maw of your pride and attempt to assassinate five." He holds his hand out, gesturing to the recent amputee in his arm. "When I severed her limbs, tore muscle and sinew, ruptured arteries, shattered bone..." He points directly at Little Beams face and speaks as crisply as possible, "It was on. Your. Head."

Another coordinated attack. Spending 6 motes on First War Excellency.

Cha+War: [roll0]

Defenses
Dodge DV: 5
Parry DV: 6

Soak: 9B/10L

Hardness: 4B/4L

Health
-0 [/][/]
-1 [/][/][/][/][/]
-2 [/][/][/][ ]
-4 [ ]
X [ ]

Willpower: 6/6

Essence
Permanent: 3
Personal: 15/15
Peripheral: 13/36
Committed: 20

[AmberVael]

Sable

Whirling streams of essence pour out of the open maw behind Sable, and as she directs her eyes towards Little Beam, death can be seen within them. She had offered mercy- first extending the hand of peace, and then proposing a surrender that should have been acceptable. But Little Beam had refused.

There was no mercy left for her to give him now.

Channeling the power of the underworld invested in her, Sable can feel its eddies and currents around them. She twists them, focuses them, turning them into strings which she wraps around Little Beam, tugging them tight as she begins to draw at his skeleton.

Bone puppet dance! First things first- she's going to try and make him throw her repeater back over to her. No point in letting him keep it, after all.

Duration of the spell is five hours (Charisma + Occult)

Dodge DV: 5
Parry DV: 4

Soak: 4B/2L, Hardness: 0B/0L

Health Levels
-0 [ ]
-1 [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
-2 [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
-4 [ ]
X [ ]

Willpower: 7

Personal Essence: 16/16
Peripheral Essence: 20/55

Active Effects:

[Naquadah]

Kohl pulls the soulsteel stake free and nimbly steps aside, the sharp point dripping divine blood. The staff itself moans pleasurably, and some of the blood seems to absorb into the hungry malice of the weapon. Kohl sees Sable whirl with death Essence, and her anima reach out to strike Little Beam like a skeletal snake; then, surprise of surprises, sees Little Beam jerkily hand Sable her weapon. He flashes Sable a blood-stained grin and steps back, aiming his weapon at the base of the god’s head, where skull meets spine. He holds in position, waiting to attack alongside his Circle.


Kohl takes an Aim action; waiting to coordinate attack with Carnifex.

Regain 2m and 1 wp from stunts.

Dodge DV 5, Parry DV 5

Soak 7B/7L, Hardness 0B/0L

Health Levels
-0 [/]
-1 [/][/][/][ ][ ]
-2 [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
-4 [ ]
X [ ]

Willpower 4/6

Personal Essence 15/15

Peripheral Essence 24/36

Active Effects:

Crystal Chameleon Form: -2e to all attacks made against the character; character always meets the prerequisites to re-establish surprise in combat.
Ominous Portent Method: removes the unexpected quality from an incoming attack or effect, so long as the character's Resonance is less than (10 - Essence rating)
Soulsteel hearthstone bracers: opponents' soak decreased by 2B/2L

[The Demented One]

Like wolves ranging around the meadow, drawn into the fold by the scent of young lambs too weak to yet walk alone, so too do the Deathknights encircle Little Beam, guided by the mocking tones of Carnifex, each taunt a battle-command whispered over the roar of his hungry arms. As they flank him on all sides, despite his desperate spear-flailing ward, Sable's spell reaches its completion. A thousand strands of essence unravel and enfold him, each one hooking onto the god's adamant bones, fusing essence to essence in an insidious anchor. As the necromancer commands, the god reaches down to her stolen flamewand, taking it from his belt and throwing it back to her hand. His eyes fill with horror as he watches his hand move of its own accord, the skeleton within pulling the strings of flesh.


Battle Joined

Tick 30: Grim, Little Beam, Chaya
Tick 31: Carnifex, Sable, Kohl, Mulberry

Everyone

The coordinated attack will take place on Tick 31. Delay or Aim until then if you'd like to take part.

Carnifex

2-die stunt, 4m or 1wp.

Sable

1-die stunt, 2m.

Tick 30: Grim, Little Beam, Chaya

[WhiteKnight777]

Grim

Grim once more put away his lute, the shadows fading. No more lies, at least not yet - now was the time for the sweet anticipation before the kill, the time to open the yawning maw of Oblivion and consume this firefly, letting him see with his final moments his true insignificance in the face of an eternity of nothing...

Aim action. Waiting for the coordinated attack.

Hardness: N/A
Soak: 1L/2B
Dodge DV: 5: ( 3 Dex + 4 Dodge + 3 Essence)/2 = 5
Parry DV: 4 : (3 Dex + 3 Melee + 1 Defense)/2 = 4

Active Charms: (Dread Lord's Demeanor, enhanced with Heart-Stopping Mien and Killing Words


Essence
Personal: 16/16
Peripheral: 16/35 (8 Committed to artifacts, 4 gained from stunt,)

Willpower: 7/7

[The Demented One]

Little Beam pulls and strains at the strands of necromancy that fetter him, twisting and tearing at their weave. He walks the katas of Heaven-and-Earth Stairway, shifting his stance to a flexible, rhythmless motion, a stance of flowing essence that cannot be constrained, cannot be shaped. Sable recoils in shock as her necromantic puppetry frays and snaps–and with a surge of essence and a heroic shout, Little Beam shatters her spell. He does not attack, even as rage burns in his eyes like the judgment of an ancient, awful thing. He waits, his shattered spear-tip held high, daring any to lay hands on the Unconquered Son.


Battle Joined

Tick 31: Carnifex, Sable, Kohl, Mulberry, Grim
Tick 33: Little Beam, Chaya


Tick 31: Carnifex, Sable, Kohl, Mulberry, Grim

[GryffonDurime]

Mulberry's hands dance, fingers spin silvered threads, weave them into tight braids as her eyes fix on Little Beam, waiting for the moment when shadow strikes out at light. At the Carnifex's first twitch of motion, the dimmest insinuation of violence, Mulberry strikes: flying forward full tilt, spinning the silvered lash until it sings a song of beautiful madness. She throws it for the godling as she passes over him and turns in mid flight and moves back. The momentum aims to wrap him up just as the others strike.


Mulberry's Grapple Attack after Aiming and Channeling Conviction:
[roll0]+ 5 Automatic Successes

Bloodied Mulberry
Dodge DV 6
Parry DV 4

Soak 5L/3B

Health
-0 [b]
-1 [b][b][b][b]
-2 [b][b][b][b][b][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
-4 [ ]
X [ ]

Willpower 5/8
Essence:
-Personal: 10/18
-Peripheral: 10/43

Active Charm Effects:
-DBT (+1 Physical Attributes, Wings, Enhanced Sight, "Fur")
-Countless Lustrous Strands (Pew pew pew)
-Relentless Lunar Fury (+1 Auto Sux on Combat, enhanced Excellencies)
-Golden Tiger Stance (Negates 3 points of DV penalty)
-Anima Totemic (Formlock, but also a -1 external penalty to hit me)

[AmberVael]

Sable

The necromancer had known what was coming- Little Beam is powerful, and glowed with that damnable light. It had been inevitable that he'd break it. So she simply raised her repeater and waited for the precise moment, taking aim.

The spell shatters. She winces at the shock, but focuses on the coiling energy around him. The necromancy sloughs away, thrown off like tearing rags, while the splendor of his searing rays shines brighter. He presents his challenge, and all begins to fall down upon him, converging, focusing...

Everything tightens around him, and the whirling anima and void around her contracts in response, forming a gaping gyre behind her that echoes and contrasts the barrel of the repeater raised in front of her. The void howls, drawing everything towards it, while the weapon remains silent, waiting.

An opening is provided for her in Carnifex's scheme. Mulberry's strands and momentum catch and turn Little Beam just the slightest amount, and hold him just in the right place for the moment she needs. A roar from the repeater answers the scream of the void behind her, and Sable fires her last shot at Little Beam.

Usual 8 mote excellency shot.
[roll0]
+4 successes

Hoping to take advantage of Carnifex's coordination...


Dodge DV: 5
Parry DV: 4

Soak: 4B/2L, Hardness: 0B/0L

Health Levels
-0 [ ]
-1 [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
-2 [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
-4 [ ]
X [ ]

Willpower: 7

Personal Essence: 16/16
Peripheral Essence: 14/55

Active Effects:

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

It takes only an instant for the Carnifex to leap from mocking the broken-hearted god to vicious executioner. He hurtles forward like a blank-faced hungry ghost, though his mouth is open and showing all of his pointed and mismatched fangs that drip with his own rotten blood.
His blade thrusts forward at Little Beam with vicious might, chains still whirring, and clicking and screeching against itself in a terrible cacophony of death. More and more black essence spills into the frozen air around the Daybreak and the claws and shadows become more substantial in a corona around him. The blade comes down on the god with furious might, attacking at the obvious holes in his defenses from being surrounded by so many bloodthirsty foes...
He pictures the fresh blood bursting from fresh wounds, a glorious crimson spray his own constructed weapon can deal out to such a hated foe. His shriveled black heart bursts with twisted, malign joy at the thought. This thought and the analytical mind are as one, and the same analysis that sees Little Beam's blood spraying about on the ground has also kept a watchful eye on his style...
The second attack is without the same twisted power as the first and after the first blow is struck, the second as deadly as it is does not receive the backing of his black soul, and simply the power of his black arm.
As he attacks he lets out a simple utterance of hatred for the little god, "I curse you, little god..."

Two attacks, only the first is getting 10 motes dumped into it for 1st Excellency. Second is just normal attack.

Attack 1: [roll0]
Attack 2: [roll1]

Defenses
Dodge DV: 5
Parry DV: 6

Soak: 9B/10L

Hardness: 4B/4L

Health
-0 [/][/]
-1 [/][/][/][/][/]
-2 [/][/][/][ ]
-4 [ ]
X [ ]

Willpower: 6/6

Essence
Permanent: 3
Personal: 15/15
Peripheral: 7/36
Committed: 20

[WhiteKnight777]

Grim

Grim laughs again, but it is almost mournful now. "The eyes close. Dances end. The stage goes dark and dim. The actors leave, but the stage remains... but in the end, even that rots away. Down and down and down again, into the dark we dance, we merry, mournful fools. And even the players who know they act cannot help but be what they are... The show must go on." He says with haunting, awful finality as he flourishes his blade - the voices within it growing silent in as a preganant moment builds...

And then Grim is behind them, his face a mirror of his name, both terrible eyes burning bright as he pushes his blade with a high overhand stroke into the back of Little Beam's neck, severing vertebrae and cleaving bone, feeling the warm bloodspray on his face as the curtain falls on another act.


spending a willpower to channel conviction. The Show Must Go On.
[roll0]

Hardness: N/A
Soak: 1L/2B
Dodge DV: 5: ( 3 Dex + 4 Dodge + 3 Essence)/2 = 5
Parry DV: 4 : (3 Dex + 3 Melee + 1 Defense)/2 = 4

Active Charms: (Dread Lord's Demeanor, enhanced with Heart-Stopping Mien and Killing Words


Essence
Personal: 16/16
Peripheral: 16/35 (8 Committed to artifacts, 4 gained from stunt,)

Willpower: 6/7

[Naquadah]

Kohl is a presence, a hungry shadow hovering around Little Beam’s light. Without looking, he senses his Circle close around Little Beam and his broken heart. Kohl moves like a dancing snake, encircled by the storm of light and birds. He senses the others move: Mulberry spinning her wrathful cocoon from above; Sable rearing back like a ghostly cobra, spraying Little Beam with fiery venom; the Carnifex bringing his daiklaive down with the hate of an enraged lion; Grim flourish and bite with the swift elegance of the hawk.

Kohl is the weasel. He capers, to build momentum. His motions are posturing, but his eyes reveal his confidence in his bite, designed to snap the necks of doves. He swings his staff; it whistles with hunger and impotent sadness. He dances in a zig-zag towards the god; the sharp point scrapes a vicious furrow in the ground once, twice, thrice, with the sound of a knife against bone. The fourth and final upswing rises sharply and abruptly when Kohl enters a sudden couch and jumps towards Little Beam, striking up and in below the right kidney, screaming through the god’s torso for his elusive heart.

His eyes close upon the penetration, savoring the feel of flesh give way, the wet tearing sound, the smell of fresh blood spurting from ruined channels, its golden bouquet visible even through closed lids. He inhales deeply as other weapons find other purchases, licks his lips as he feels the blood spatter against them. Kohl knows a fine vintage will be born tonight.


Spending a willpower to channel Compassion, again trying to put this broken-winged dove of a god out of his misery, and adding 3 dice from Aiming.
[roll0]
Damage 6L (piercing) + extra successes

Dodge DV 5, Parry DV 5

Soak 7B/7L, Hardness 0B/0L

Health Levels
-0 [/]
-1 [/][/][/][ ][ ]
-2 [ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]
-4 [ ]
X [ ]

Willpower 3/6

Personal Essence 15/15

Peripheral Essence 24/36

Active Effects:

Crystal Chameleon Form: -2e to all attacks made against the character; character always meets the prerequisites to re-establish surprise in combat.
Ominous Portent Method: removes the unexpected quality from an incoming attack or effect, so long as the character's Resonance is less than (10 - Essence rating)
Soulsteel hearthstone bracers: opponents' soak decreased by 2B/2L

[The Demented One]

In one moment, with one breath, the deathknights cast down their fury at Little Beam. Bloodied Mulberry's silken lash coils and twists around the godling's aureate flesh, snaring limbs with woven strands of inescapable essence. As he writhes and fights against the coils of silk that strangle him, he is suddenly washed over with flowing obsidian flames, Sable's burning hatred, that melts the very skin from his bones, leaving sinuous muscles exposed to the ragged air.

As divine agony pierces the air, a howling wordless lamentation, Grim and Carnifex flank the god, butchering him with twin blades. Grim's daiklave cracks Little Beam's spine with grotesque force, while Carnifex saws through ichorous viscera, spilling them on the ground. It is one word of anguish that Little Beam speaks, pathetic and almost childish. "Mother!" And then Kohl's mercy comes upon him, a sharp shadow of soulsteel transfixing the still-beating heart of the god. Little Beam gasps, choking on his own ichor, and then is still.

The immortal gods do not live and die as men do. They clothe themselves in transient *shapes of essence, flesh no more mortal or living than the stone of the Imperial Mountain, or the waters of the unbounded West. To die in such a shape is not to die, but to sleep, the sundered essence of the divinity only waiting to be called back into life by the prayers of the faithful. Little Beam will live again. To die in such a shape is not to be slaughtered as a mortal, not to leave behind a conquered corpse, but only to be unwoven and unshaped. And yet Little Beam did not anticipate his death in the Mourning Fields, did not know the curse he took upon himself as he first transgressed the borders of this most cursed shadowland. As his soul flees life, his body falls, a shape of essence curdles and congealed by the poisonous geomancy of this unholy place. Before you lies the corpse of a god.

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

The whirring teeth of the necrosurgeon's weapon suddenly stop with a single grinding sound. He stabs it into the filthy earth at his feet that is soaked with the blood of Deathknight, mortal and god alike. His face is blank, free of anything but the same blood that drenches the floor. He reaches into his robe and takes his impure, black Jade cane and begins to walk with a limp that is simply a phantasm in his aged brain. "Mulberry! Take the girl and the dead, wretched thing to my lab. I have plans for the both of them." He looks up at her with his black eyes. "And keep the girl alive. She is crucial."

[AmberVael]

Sable

"What plans do you have, Carnifex?"
Sable inquires, her voice piercing as she looks towards him.
"I do hope you're not just going to use them as scrap, no questions asked. If the girl is alive, we could learn things from her... presuming that she is in good enough shape to answer questions."

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

He turns his head quickly toward the necromancer as she inquires. "For now she is hardly in any state to choke out any words that aren't cursed and blackened as we are. The priority is to keep her alive, she will become quite useful, I assure you." He coughs up another gobbet of his own clotted blood. "Though as for the now dimmed beam... he will become likely as useful."

He begins to limp again, down toward the black staircase that leads directly to his torture room/laboratory. "But I am nothing if not a man of priorities," He coughs again, "and as of this moment, parts of my internal structure are distressingly external."

[AmberVael]

Sable

"I'd imagine that would be somewhat urgent."
Sable says dryly.
"I believe there may be some ways that I can lend assistance, if you have no objections."
She moves to follow after him, her movement and poise elegant and graceful in contrast to his limping, and also to the ravening void tearing at the world around her.

"Certain talents and prayers may prove useful to you."
She elaborates, one hand idly slipping her repeater back into its holster after reloading it and cleaning it off. No doubt she'd clean it far more thoroughly later, especially since Little Beam had gotten hold of it.

[WhiteKnight777]

Grim

Grim capers over to Little Beam's body, picking him up by the head and looking at him. Propping up the corpse with a grunt of effort, he begins to work his jaw in a parody of speech. Grim pitches his voice at a ridiculous falsetto, his lips not moving as he throws his voice to make it appear as if Little Beam is speaking.

"Oooh... The Void... so Beautiful... they should have sent a poet.

Ahh... I danced with death, now death becomes me... woe! Woe and ruin am I! Ne'er should I have tarried where shadows fall and fall on me and crush the light and steal the breath."

Speaking for himself now, Grim pats Little Beam on the head, as if forgiving him. "Tarry not, little soul, but speed onward into black night. Hark! The mouthless voice with a thousand mouths speaks and eacts and chomps and barks at a blackened, cracked moon. Sun falls and son falls and here we are in the withering. Ride on into the night, and let not the fireflies bother thee."

Finishing his nonsensical speech, Grim begins a slow, stately waltz, his face a mask of seriousness as he cavorts with the godling's corpse.

[Naquadah]

The lightstorm around Kohl shatters as the component motes dissipate. His anima still burns one step below iconic, an indigo-tinged charnel bonfire. His caste mark is a torn scab, but the flow finally seems to begin to ebb. With a flick of the wrist, he no longer holds a stave, but a blood-soaked fan. His tongue gently traces the razor edge, savoring.

"I want at least some of the blood, Carnifex. Imagine the wine we can make from the blood of a god. Heady, glowing wine. Oh, if the blood is this delicious raw, just think how it will be when properly fermented..."

He looks over to scrapes marking Chaya's desperate attempts to free herself from the clinch. On a whim, Kohl collects Chaya's fallen weapons and tucks them into the folds of silk adorning him before turning to her fallen limbs. He hoists an arm, tastes the bloody stump...superb. Producing a few silk kerchiefs, Kohl tenderly binds the ruined ends and lifts the limbs awkwardly. He smiles down mockingly at the collection bundled in his arms. "Too bad you were not as smart as your friend. You should have left when you had the chance. Ah well, blood is blood."

[GryffonDurime]

Mulberry spins her argent webs again, securing Chaya and stopping what little blood her nigh-Exalted form allows to flow. She hefts the broken girl and attaches her strings to the godly corpse, dragging him along. Upon reaching the laboratory, she sets Little Beam on the good Carnifex's slab and sets Chaya more gently beside him, securing her neck to the slab with chains before transforming.

It's an explosion of moths, and Mulberry is Mulberry again, not smiling like the others but gracefully somber. She traces a wound on Chaya's chest with her hand and then plunges it in as if the Golden Child's flesh was nothing more than water. Chaya gasps.

"It's old Lunar magic. First Age. Don't worry so much, I can't even turn the safeties off yet. Even if I wanted to," she adds, fiddling around with the girl's organs. Mulberry clasps her hand around the heart, squeezes it a bit like a buyer at market. "You are a curious thing, aren't you?" she asked, moving to the throat to examine the vocal chords. She plays at plucking them softly. "Not quite mortal. Not quite Exalt. Some pale reflection..."

[The Demented One]

Chaya struggles to scream as Mulberry's fingers play with her vocal cords, unable to force air against the slender folds of muscle. As Mulberry draws out her hand from the young girl's throat, she heaves, retching at the utter violation of her flesh, both by Mulberry's flesh-weaving fingers and Carnifex's blade. Her still-bloodied stumps wave about wildly, not yet having become accustomed to their mutilation. Her eyes tremble moistly as she looks up at Mulberry. "Wh–why?" she sobs, choking back hot vomit. "Why are you doing this to me?"

[WhiteKnight777]

Grim

As Mulberry drags the corpse of Little Beam, Grim rides it like a child on a sled, humming bits of nonsense rhyme and music to himself. When they reach the lab, he leaps up onto a high cabinet, squatting and looking downward like a leering gargoyle carved by a particularly perverse sculptor, quietly observing the corrupted Lunar's investigations, speaking only a few snatches of doggerel.

"Half of nothing and half of something... hrmm.. But not nothing, not something. Strangeling indeed."

[GryffonDurime]

"Immediately? Because you're leverage, though you have my condolences. They're glorious things, aren't they? Your Little Beam, my Carnifex. It's a weakness. Brilliance, either shining or dark. And just look at where we end up," Mulberry said as she pulled a seat beside the slab. "So let's talk. Let's talk about Little Beam and about how you ended up caught in his mess. Because I'm going to be completely honest with you, kiddo. At this point, you're gonna belong to someone. You want to belong to me. Grim'll make you go insane, Sable will probably raise your ghost and bind it, and Kohl will drink you dry. Let's not even talk about lovely Carnifex. But me? I wish you no specific harm. I think I could even get your legs back. Arms are trickier," she adds as she leans down to eye level with Chaya. "The rest of them can do worse things than just killing you. Me? Well, let's just say I understand the allure of those brilliant men, and my indifference is about as close to sympathy as you'll get here."

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

The Carnifex walks into the dim light from above, the clacking of his cane now audible. He stares at her and stops at the table once she begins to begins to inspect the severed limbs that were once attached to legs. "We did not do this to you. Your former lover brought you here, and we are the side effect." He locks eyes with the dying girl on the table. "By my decision I have allowed you to live." He begins reaching into his robes and pulls out a long needle threaded with tendons and pierces her still raw flesh, pulling on the skin to pull it close together with his spare arms and sewing it closed as painfully as he can. "But soon you will see us as family... and your Little Beam will be nothing but a festering memory you wish you could purge from your mind with your claws."

He gave his Lunar mate an indistinguishable look from any other person's point of view, but the moth-totem could feel in his heart a tiny twinge of black affection at the mention of his name and the hint at his reputation.

[The Demented One]

Chaya tries her best to choke back her tears and her disgust, and with more success than Mulberry would have expected. She breathes deep, deep as oceans, and her eyes dry. "I was a slave. Chaya's not even my real name, I don't even know what it is. Just called me that, after where they took me from. Brought me to Nexus, for the markets–but then, then Little Beam came, and he saved us." Her voice has a desperate excitement of it, an almost feverish haste just barely restrained by Chaya's composure. "He let us free, but then he told me that I was...I was special. Worthy. That I could be more." She makes a gentle sucking sound, an almost childish attempt at holding back tears. "What are you going to do to me?"

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

Hollow Carnifex only blurted out with dark laughter at Chaya's words, holding one of his hands to his chest. He wiped some blood from his mouth as he barely managed a smile. "Oh Chaya! What are we to do to you? If we wanted you dead you would be dead countless times over." He locked eyes with her again, "Chaya... we are going to make you more."

[Naquadah]

Kohl follows Mulberry down to the lab, watches as she secures the girl. He places the bundle of wrapped limbs next to the god's body. He starts to remove the silk kerchiefs binding the limbs, grimaces, and leaves them be. But at Mulberry's words, his head whips around to her. His face contorts as he remembers the hairline fractures across his back, but he blinks and his eyes become lucid again.

"Not an Exalt? What do you mean? She shot sunfire from this thing!" He raises one of Chaya's weapons, inspects it, smells for firedust residue. "Don't know if it's Essence-based, but it doesn't smell abnormal."

[WhiteKnight777]

Grim

Grim gave Mulberry a beatific smile, as if she had paid him a high compliment. He hopped down from the shelf, performing a form-perfect courtly bow, and his features were overtaken by what passed for lucidity in the insane Moonshadow's private world "Ah, Broken Moon... so kindly! this one but tears away the veils that hide, shatters the mirror to show truth in cracked reflections..."

And then he looked at Carnifex, as if hearing an absolutely wonderful idea. He clapped his hands and nodded. "Oh yes... break the ties that bind and let the black sneak in... perfect."

He moved over to where Chaya lay, leaning down like a stork bending to drink, and began to whisper in her ear, holding up one hand to stay his companions...

His voice became a low, buzzing hum, like insects seeking a way through her ears to sting at her brain - burning hope, killing love with bitter, poisoned lies. He never loved her. He only wanted to use her, like a dead doll-thing. Better to be dead than to love such a man.


using Bitter Sweetness of Betrayal [roll0] +3 successes for Essence rating. Also using Soul-Flaying Gaze, if she's mortal and qualifies.

Choosing the nonviolent betrayal option.

[The Demented One]

"NO!" screams Chaya as Grim whispers in her ear, fulfilling Mulberry's promise. But she is only a girl, and his words flow with black, black ice. As he speaks his secrets, she slowly stiffens, a deadness dulling the light of her eyes as she yields more and more to his seductions. By the time he is done there is a breaking in her, the shattered fragments of hope, of love strewn across her mien. "That bastard. That bastard." She weeps hot rage as Grim hangs over her, drinking down the sweetness of her broken heart.

[WhiteKnight777]

Grim

Grim grins at the others, a malefic light of unholy pleasure shining in his eyes as he takes a low bow, like an actor being thrown roses and accolades at the end of a performance.

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

The Carnifex looks up at Grim as he continues to sew the limbs shut as painfully as he's capable of without effort. Any blood that gets on his hands he simply licks from them with his dried tongue idly while performing his painful surgery. "It's been made clear, has it?" He looks back down at what he's doing despite skill enough to do it blind, "Good... perhaps she'll appreciate seeing his corpse walk about ripping apart the nobles of Lookshy with the help of her..." He grabs one of the pale severed limbs as it limply dangles in his grasp, "spare... parts..."

[GryffonDurime]

"Now, Carnifex. You can do whatever you like so long as you're not rude about it. That's the refuge of the weak," Mulberry says, trying not to let the Deathknights know how disquieted she is by Grim's transformation. Given just a moment more, an hour alone, she could have done it with infinite subtlety. But Deathknights do not trade in subtlety, in hale minds.

"Bored now," she says, shaking it away with a quick jerk of her head. She shivers for just an instant and then she's a leopard.

[AmberVael]

Sable

"You do me such injustice, Mulberry."
Sable says, her voice more relaxed, implying only casual offense.
"I would have rather this violence ended before it started, and I have no intention of making a ghost of a captive, let alone one who has been so abused already."
Mostly because she can get twice the use out of someone that way... when they die, make a ghost, continue. Plus, there is a certain satisfaction to seeing the living serve the dead.

She moves over to Chaya and very lightly sets a hand on her back, quietly speaking to her.
"Let out your tears. From just the little I've seen and heard of you, I know how you've suffered. You've had everything torn from you, and then when you dared hope, it all came crashing down again, and you feel like you've lost even more.
"I cannot promise you a gift that will end all suffering, or the perfect plan and life. But I can offer you guidance, if you wish it; I've seen just as much of the wrong in this world as you have. You can move on. There is a way beyond this."
Sable insinuates herself slowly into Chaya's confidence- not doing everything all at once, or too powerfully. No, she lets her words and offer seep in naturally, trying to make herself seem normal and familiar in contrast to all of the others. The content of her words, the sincerity and simple quality of them are difficult to fight, all too comforting and empathizing.

"I can help you. You have been betrayed by the world at every turn. You were forced low, into being a slave, and then you were deceived and because of that, regretfully, maimed."
The Midnight's hand gently moves a little circle over Chaya's back in a reassuring manner, as her commiserating words force home what Chaya has been through, and the depth of her misfortune.
"But why do you think we are the way we are? You look at us and see mockeries of the world you thought you knew, you saw us as evil, no doubt. But look into your heart, and look at yourself- do you see the depravity of the world? How it might turn against you, and turn someone into something that seems like we are? It isn't our natures that makes us the way we are..."

Slowly, carefully, she turns her words to not only insinuate her similarity to Chaya, but Chaya's similarity to all of them. That Chaya was one of them.
"We're survivors, Chaya. We've seen and experienced the worst the world has to offer... we understand your pain. And we can offer you a way out."
She looks into Chaya's eyes, completely sincere.
"Will you trust me, Chaya? Would you like me to help you?"

Looks like a Charisma + Presence roll to me.
Going to spend 8 personal essence on Second Presence Excellency.

[roll0]
+4 successes.

[The Demented One]

"Yes."

Chaya speaks with awful conviction, her voice ragged with a newfound sense of self. "Maybe I am always was a slave. To men, to Little Beam...but now I know." Her eyes darken with deep blue ice, a cold front of hatred that chills her mien. "You...you're monsters. You've done horrible things to me, you've abused me, you've violated me. But at least I know it." She flashes a smile more toothsome than it should be. "So I'm a slave, and I'm broken. Fix me."

[WhiteKnight777]

Grim

Grim looks at Mulberry with a strange, indulgent grin as she shifts into a cat, gently getting down on his haunches and looking into her eyes, the Urd-Born orb now long since covered by his soulsteel patch. For a lunatic, he was disturbingly astute sometimes. "Ah, Broken Moon... A wondering wonder, I do have, what eyes would see were they to look upon you with veil rent and all truths bared... Quivvering beat of dying heart, or darkly blooming passion-flowers in the corpse-sown field. So pretty, silver in the dark of the moon..." His pale fingers played delicately over the patch before retreating.


"Ahh... Another night, perhaps." He said with a wink, rising to watch with appreciation as Sable worked.

[AmberVael]

Sable

Sable very gently strokes Chaya's hair, just a little.
"We will, Chaya. But right now you definitely need some rest, and some more physical repairs. I'll be right here with you the whole time, however."
She looks to Carnifex.
"I trust you have something in mind? At least for temporary measures?"

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

The Carnifex finishes sewing closed the last stump of Chaya and sets his needles back within the darkness of his robes. "She will lack the capacity for movement for a time. It is likely for the best." He looks up at Sable with his intense stare. "With time you will have the girl literally eating from your hand and I will have something fixed up for her." He turns his head again in a way that is both typical and unsettling, this time to Bloodied Mulberry. "We've much work to do."

[GryffonDurime]

Mulberry returns to her mortal shape, sprawled out on the floor, belly down and head propped up by her arms. "I could just restore her limbs, you know. Short little excursion into the Wyld. It's not even hard," she adds, derisively. She doesn't move to get up even as Carnifex gestures.

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

His voice is not angry, simply crisp and stern as he gazes at his Lunar mate's seductive shape sprawled across the floor. "As devoted as she may seem, trust is not something that should come to use so easily!" He stamps his cane into the ground with a loud clack, "She will remain in her current state until her new limbs are complete and she is within our command as adamantly as I deem worthy!"

[WhiteKnight777]

Grim

Grim laughs softly at what seems to him to be a childlike tantrum "Ahh... argent orders from the sable field... but all will is dust, and words are not but cold corpse-breath."

[GryffonDurime]

Mulberry jumps to her feet--or to someone else's, because when she stands she's no longer herself but rather an old crone from some backwater mulestop called Lotus. She shakes her head and snarls a bit: "Shameful! Shameful! Talking to your elders in such a presumptuous manner."

In a blink of her long-lashed eyes, she's back to normal.

[Naquadah]

Kohl pulls up a stool just inside Chaya's line of sight. He catches her fluttering eyes with his own, the color of moss on wet granite.

"My dear, these squabbles are not befitting to listen to in your state," he croons softly. "And as for what Mulberry said, I would not drink you. You are beauty. You are art. I have known that since the moment you came to our home, a light in the dreariness. Not dim and flickering, like your older companion. Not overbearing and blinding, like that husk of a godling. Soft and cool, a pattern to savor, an image of endings and beginnings and endings. I cannot fathom what lies the bright torch forced into your head with his burning voice. But hearken and be soothed, for I have a tale to tell, and it is true, and you may yet learn." He produces It Holds Enthralled, flicks open the fan. Ghost-silver images dance across the thin black metal, and move with his words. "Ah, yes. A perfect story. One of the oldest stories. They have spoken, and I am pleased to be their voice." He clears his throat, sits back, and holds the fan like a picture-book so Chaya can see it. His voice is hypnotic; he sways to its rhythm, allows the whispers of the Neverborn to flow into and through him.

"There was once a time of perfection, of beauty and bliss. Everything was as it should be. Things fell into a proper order. There were lords and servants, and all had a role, and things were good." The fan flutters; the silver shapes dance off of it into the air, and form the image of a gigantic mountain and a city in the clouds. The mansion is gigantic and beautiful; tall, gorgeous people dwell there, and are attended. Surrounding the castle are dozens of small homes, full of gracious and happy people.

"The lords were all-knowing, and all-making, and all-enduring. Lords of tilled earth and coastline, of ocean depths and dew upon a spider’s web. They made things of beauty and depth, and brought joy to the masses with their creations. They were the smell of fresh meadows and the kiss of the rain. They made love to the world while their servants toiled, as servants are wont to do. And the servants grew jealous of the games the lords played, but they could not act. And so they grew bitter." The silver flows into unearthly faces attached to gigantic people, joyous faces bigger than the world, with a group of wretches holding their robes from the ground, casting evil glares at their masters behind their backs.

"In time, the servants' jealousy grew, but they could not act, for they feared, and were craven, and their hate grew even more, for they were not loved as their lords were. So they seduced one of the lords, and flattered him, and lied to him. And because he thought those broken liars loved him, he gave them a jewel in thanks. But the dishonest servants laughed behind the lord's back, and pitied him, and conspired. And they took that jewel and shone a million bad colors through it. And what came forth was the light of deceit." A giant, bearded man with a limp hands a dark gem to a cluster of wretches. The servants ooze with pustules, clothed in rags that mock the dress of the lords. Each bows in turn; the lord leaves. The servants cackle and spit, passing the gem around and mockingly bowing to the current person holding it. As they pass it around, each slips it under his or her robes in turn, and the gem comes out glowing brighter and brighter with a sickly, unpleasant light. When the passing around is done, many lights, none of them wholesome, emanate from the gem.

"They took the light of deceit and looked through it. They saw the people, joyous of the lords, who ignored the servants. They knew the lords loved the people, and the people their lords, so in their spite, they sought to turn that love away, into hate. So they gathered the light of deceit, and wrapped it around stones, and changed it with their wickedness, and tossed it away to the people, knowing it would eat their love away." The biggest wretch, with four arms and the face of a lizard, blows on the gem, and it breaks into many pebbles. Wicked and cowardly-looking, he laughs with a wild-haired woman, and she drops the bad pebbles in a pot and stirs it. She pours the resulting foul-looking liquid into a box, and drops it from the sky. It falls into a man's hands; he opens it, finding a giant candy treat. He invites his village to a feast; they eat it, and one by one their joyous looks turn to scowls, their prayers to mutterings. They have become deceit.

“One by one, they glowed. Not with the pure light the lords gave off, but with the light of deceit, refracted through hundreds of individual souls. And the lords knew not, for they were gentle and trusting, and believed the world still just even though it was not. And in that moment, the servants tugged hard on the light of deceit, and those sickened by it wailed, as their bodies became not their own, and they did the unthinkable.” The people of the village all glow with the unsavory light. They pick up weapons. They hack at each other. They look at the beautiful manor of the lords, sitting in the clouds. They raise their weapons to the sky and start to walk towards it.

“The lords loved the world and the people in it. And such was their love that when the people touched by the light of deceit struck them, they knew not what to do. They talked, and they pleaded, and they begged, and they commanded, but the people were not themselves, and the light of deceit made them strong, and as the first lord cried out in pain, feeling sadness for the first time, he disappeared and was gone. And the servants rejoiced, and cackled, and jeered. And as the sadness spread through the lords, the servants were quick to take up their robes and scepters, and play at being masters.” The people get to the manor. They fling terrible things at it. The lords come to balconies, pleading for them to stop. The people break the door in, and begin to pillage the manor.

“Many lords were hurt by the ones they loved best, the ones wielding the light of deceit. And these sad-lords cried and cried, til they cried themselves to sleep. And they slept fitfully, crying even there. And the servants moved into the manor of the lords. And those who ate the light of deceit became something between servant and lord. And the world was bad.” The tall lords and ladies are swarmed as if by barbarian ants. They fall to their knees, crying and tearing at themselves. One by one, they all fall into the fetal position and sink into the floor. The servants stand behind them, cackling and grabbing for the discarded scepter and robes. They wave the items around, hideous faces contorted with mad glee, and throw wide the doors to the game-parlor and stride inside, with hungry looks on their faces.

“In time, a few of the sad-lords woke up, and decided that the people were too upset for them to wallow anymore. So they reached out to those most hurt by the servants, and most hurt by the light of deceit. And the sad-lords’ new servants found some of the pebbles glowing with the light of deceit, set aside. And the sad-lords cried, for they knew that the bad things would come again. So they ate as many stones as they could, and because they once were lords, they took away the light of deceit, and make the pebbles cool and dark and smoky, to heal the lies burned into the world by the light, and they called the new pebbles the balm of night. They gave the balm of night to those most hurt by the world, those killed by deceit or violence, those who wanted the bad light to go away and to return to the beauty of the before. They gave the balm of night…to us. To heal the wounds left by the light of deceit. To evict the servants, and prepare the house of the lords for their return. And to bring the people back to their proper lords, and out of that bad, killing light.” Five lords, crippled below the knees, lay in a rough circle., held up by their elbows. They pass a handful of sickly-glowing pebbles around, touch them to their brow, blow on them. The glow fades with each lord that touches them. The last lord closes her hands around them; when she opens them, the pebbles ooze cool, comforting ink onto her hands. She passes them around again, each lord anoints himself with the ink. They drop the inky pebbles into a pot and a group of crows alights on its rim. Each eats a pebble and flies off.

“My dear, this is all relevant to you. You were one of the people. Little Beam…the son of a servant. The son of a murderer. The son of the greatest deceiver ever born, and the most cowardly. Little Beam has tried to poison you with the light of deceit, and here you are. We are those cleansed. We are the guardians of the sad-lords. We will allow them to be hurt no longer, but the godling brought you here to hurt them. To hurt the ones who loved you best, and cradled you within them. We did not hurt you, but we could not allow that. Little Beam craved the light of deceit, but could not control it, so he tried to control you to get to it. Now you have a chance. Cast off his lies, my dear! The sad-lords may yet smile and kiss your brow and soothe you. But you must accept it…if not for Little Beam, you would not be hurt. You would not be cold. You would not be here. Let the sad-lords take your sorrow, and smile again into the shadows and the mist.” Kohl snaps the fan shut, and all is silence. There are tears in his eyes, and he daintily flicks them away with the closed fan. He smoothes Chaya’s hair, leans over and kisses her brow. “Let it go. It is all-taking. He never deserved your love. Let it go…and be free.”


3 monologue actions, concluding with a Presence-based social attack at the end. Spending 4m, 1 wp to activate Broken Heart Triumph; trying to turn a positive Intimacy directed at Little Beam into one of hatred. Channeling Compassion; this girl need not be burdened with the love of one unworthy of it any longer. It Holds Enthralled is providing Haunting Apparition Trick to provide the visual images.

[roll0]

[WhiteKnight777]

Grim

Grim listened to the tale, enraptured, his eyes bright with childlike glee as he heard Kohl's tale. Such pretty, pretty words. Such marvelous images. Why, he should be taking notes... but the eye beneath the patch itched. Grim whispered, half-chanting to himself.

"Lies and truth like oil and water - except they mix, oh how they mix. One is the other and the other is one, and on and on and on they roll, never stopping. Until they do." He rocks back and forth, hugging himself as he grins. "Oh yes... such sweet, sweet words. True at once, and untrue. But that's not the joke - the joke is that it doesn't matter. And in that... in that sweet truth, there is the breaking of chains and the opening of doors, and the sound of her wings."

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

"Ffffffeh." Is all he could say to Mulberry's playful taunt at first. He began reaching into his robe to slip ribs of his back into his flesh as he started walking outside, the clacking of his cane and the light metallic creaking of his arms the only noise that came from him. He ignored the story being told to the broken girl and looked over his shoulder, "Mulberry! We need bones and flesh. We're going to be guiding my Gears to dig up the graves for any stray bodies." He then turns to the rest of the group, "You lot keep the girl intact, I don't want any damage done while I'm gone!" then she turned to Sable, "And if you would, dear priestess, look to your feet and pray for favor. The Neverborn may have something to provide." And with that several of his hooded, undead slaves accompany him outside.

[WhiteKnight777]

Grim

Grim watches the Carnifex's retreating back with an expression of wry amusement. "Nothing begets nothing, oh Broken Husk... 'save on some strangeling time when nothing begets what nothing did not intend. Even in the most well-tended of shadow gardens, strange fruit may swell with unwholesome ripeness."

[AmberVael]

Sable

Sable shakes her head a little at Carnifex and the others, and smiles to Chaya.
"As you can see, my fellows are most eccentric and outspoken. But they do mean well, in their own way."
She stands and brushes her clothing a little, mentally preparing herself.
"It seems my services are required. Would you like to help me? No strength of body is required for this. You are just as suitable- perhaps more suitable- for this task as anyone else here."
Just a hint of flattery, and an offer to be useful despite what has happened to her- no doubt it helps assuage some of the doubts and uncertainty Chaya must be feeling.

[The Demented One]

Chaya listens with rapt attention to Kohl's history, clutching to his every word as if it very the sole hold above a bottomless precipice. Between the enchantments woven by Grim and Kohl and the unnatural persuasiveness of Sable, her mind is a thing very close to breaking, a gentle film of gossamer just waiting to be ripped apart. She makes not even the slightest noise, the slightest breath as he tells his tale, her eyes dulling under the force of his unnatural manipulations. As Sable comes to speak to her, she looks up with glittering eyes. "Heh, very funny. You monsters...must think you're so funny." she says, choking out the words. "Yes. I will help. Tell me what to do."

[Naquadah]

Kohl follows Carnifex with his eyes as he stomps out. He shakes his head, speaking to none and all. "Ah, so drawn to the moment. To this moment. The moment drawn to is past, dead. Such is the way of the worlds. Past is dead, present is dying. There is no rush in anything, for the Maw nibbles at our passage and waits wide open before us. We walk from it to it, on these little grains so eagerly devoured by our passage. Damage done? Damage is removed. She need not be traumatized before and after. After, she definitely will be. The clarity will help her savor it all. But for now, sanity need not be sacrificed utterly for petty horrors."

Kohl blinks as he finishes, and almost seems taken aback by his own words. He smiles and looks at Grim. "My friend, I do believe I have been spending far too much time listening to your performances."

[AmberVael]

Sable

"I do not jest."
She says, her eyes and expression serious.
"You will come to understand why it is we act the way we do. In time, what is monstrous will become sympathetic, even Carnifex's brutal and paranoid treatment of you. You may never entirely forgive, but neither will you judge it so harshly."

Sable turns from the subject deftly.
"For now, however, I want you to join me in prayer."
One slim hand lightly touches Chaya's brow as if in blessing.
"Turn your thoughts away from the world, and think upon what it has made you, think of what you see in us, and the little you understand. Cast your thoughts to what seems hideous..."

Memories flicker through Sable's mind as she searches for what she wants to show to Chaya, what she should worship and speak to. She thinks of the contrast of Thorns... her life there, and what its fall meant to her. That one memory of a girl trying so hard to survive, railing against it without a chance; the pointless threat of the kitchen knife she wielded.
"It all flows from life. Life is a slow, changing decay in which all things degenerate. But in that decay, something glorious can happen. When something fades away entirely- when everything is entirely destroyed... there is peace. It can no longer die, wither, or corrupt, but all of that has been pulled from it."
Thorns went up in flames, completely destroyed and subjugated. Everything that she had been tormented by... gone. It was death, and it was freedom. It was peace.

"It is this peace that we seek, and that you should seek. Look to the quiet stillness of the Underworld, for there your tortured soul will find its rest."

It was not everything Chaya would need to know and understand, but it was a start. A start she could work with, and something that would be familiar and reasonable. Sable lets her confidence and haunted peace flow over the girl as she begins meditating, preparing herself for what she wanted to do- the prayer.

[WhiteKnight777]

Grim

Grim looks at Kohl with a small smile on his face, his eyes meeting those of his alluring companion - again, with a sharp flash of shocking lucidity in his normally wild eye. "The eye opens and truth seeps in like corpse-pus. Sanity and madness are not - they never were. Merely words. Words die. Thought remains awhile longer, but it too is nothing. Something lasts for now, nothing forever. Even an ocean of moments is swallowed by the gaping maw that is all. The place from which the eye sees is all that changes what is."

[GryffonDurime]

Mulberry clambers to her feet, shakes her head at Chaya and sweeps past Carnifex before flipping up onto a window. "With my respects, Carnifex, I've my own plan to attend to for the moment." She flashes him a smile and then dives through the window, landing softly on her feet.

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

The Carnifex lets out an indignant snort and wordlessly goes back to his task. He stands on grotesque platforms of bone and mud over the gravestones that litter this place. His black-hooded minions plow through dead earth with spades, no complaints and no signs of weariness, the Carnifex need only stand above them and keep an eye out for any bits of flesh and bone that were previously overlooked, and perhaps find new levels of bodies below the soil.

Over the next several weeks, the Carnifex spends many days and nights sleepless in his lab. Dim light over a blood-soaked table. The stench of decay was heavy in his lab and the licks of black essence that enshrouded the necrosurgeon did nothing to relieve the noxiousness in the air. The only company he would allow is his Lunar mate, Bloodied Mulberry though he treated her not as a lover, but as a mere assistant. Iron, dead flesh and bones were littered before him, becoming something... unnatural. Day in and out of designing, building, redesigning, rebuilding and so on. It was never good enough. Never good enough! Even his previous experiments were put on hold or even cannibalized! No matter, they would be rebuilt better than before.
Weeks and weeks later, the dread craftsman finally returned from his lab, slightly more hunched than usual. Blackened flesh and even darker steel. They were fashioned in a way only traditional for the old man and his original master. Blades edged with chains made of razor-teeth, countless screws drilled through them and out the other side. The limbs themselves bent in such unnatural ways in such unnatural places, but they were perfect. The Carnifex has not merely built replacement limbs or even just weapons. He had truly created art.

"Do you know what these are?" He could barely contain his dark glee as he spoke to his patient. "You are probably thinking that they are... replacements to what I took. That they are weapons for you." He managed a grin despite his lipless face. "They are both, but they are the most important as a tool for me. They are your tethers, your strings, your leash. These are the symbols that you are our dog! Do you understand that, Chaya?"
All the while he spoke, he stared into the girls eyes and stitched necrotic flesh to living, bone to iron. Long black needles pierced her skin and scarlet trickled onto the table, beading and pooling on cold metal.
When his work was done he demanded the girl continue to lay down until his command, so he may inspect each and every one of his pieces of craft. He wore a blank stare of pride and awe of himself. He was as giddy as a child.

"Now stand, you Blackened Chain bitch. Stand upon your new Agonies!"

I literally can't fail any of the Craft checks if Mulberry assists, so just a few Medicine checks to stitch them to Chaya. Channeling Conviction here, for SCIENCE!

Arm 1: [roll0]
Arm 2: [roll1]
Leg 1: [roll2]
Leg 2: [roll3]

Behold my twisted creation!

[AmberVael]

Sable

Sable spends long hours schooling Chaya in the way of thought of the underworld and the Deathknights, beginning slowly and working with the most understandable philosophies, and progressing through the more difficult ones, and the ones most antithetical to what Chaya would have believed before. All throughout, Sable portrays herself as fair and friendly- not forcing anything onto Chaya. Only asserting the truths over and over, and enticing her closer to the void. She acquaints her with a little necromancy, with prayers, letting her grow ever more comfortable with it and drawing her deeper into the mysteries and dark depths of the underworld and its masters.

As time moves on, she brings Chaya to her small sanctum, where her numerous spells overlayed the area, haunting it and causing it to feel... somber. Hopeless. And yet... at peace. The peace of acceptance of death. But it does not start this way- as one progresses towards the center, they progress through the stages of death. Denial in the outer ring, the feeling of grasping, greedy life. Anger, of rebellion of what is and should be. Bargaining, attempting to placate what cannot be stopped. Depression, the emotional despair and hopelessness that eventually leads to the center. Acceptance.

Deliberately, Sable takes time to draw Chaya into her sanctum, letting it mirror her lessons, showing her the stages of life reaching the state it should reach, and the peace that is found there once they do. The contrast of the stages- the writhing, agonizing struggle- with the acceptance, calm, and solemn mind of the quiet dead. It does not feel right, until one is at rest, and so Sable seeks to convince Chaya that it is, and should be, the same for her.

"Give into it, and it will bless you." Sable says quietly, iron hard certainty in her voice.

She also spends time assisting Carnifex, in her own way. She gathers up blood and scraps from the scene of the fight, not caring from whom they come, and mixes it well with ashes and drops of her own blood. While doing so, she takes the time to explain to Chaya what she does, and why. Each addition she makes to her sacrificial mixture represents one of the five understandings of the deathknights, with the second to last being fire as she ignites the mixture.

The necromancer makes no grand speeches for this sacrifice, no elaborate performance. Instead, she consecrates herself, and lets go of everything. She seeks acceptance- not of death, not of her state, but of that very final end which she expects will come one day. The maw of the void. She offers herself, and her sacrifice before it, handing it up to the Neverborn who serve it and exemplify it.

Upon her success, the last understanding makes itself seen in her sacrifice. Nothing remains of it- it is completely devoured, leaving only trails of abyssal essence behind. For nothing escapes the all consuming mouth of the void.

When it comes time for Chaya's new limbs, she is there to assist- mostly with keeping Chaya calm and remaining by her side, as she has attempted to do constantly, desiring to provide for Chaya and let the girl base herself in Sable's strength... making her dependent on her, of course. Yet what is really on her mind at the time as how all of her beautiful, delicate work is contrasted by the harsh, careless words of Carnifex.

"Carnifex, you would do well to hold your tongue."
She says, her voice soft, yet like a whip lash. Her eyes narrow at him in cold distaste and contempt, like a master to a slave.
"I have tolerated your... interesting views up until this point, but my patience wears thin. Chaya is not our slave, nor our dog- but our ally. If you persist in this degrading delusion about her place, then I will have to endeavor to correct your error more thoroughly."

Her tone is sharp and strong as a needle, wielded deftly. Combined with her words, it implies a very nasty end to this argument for Carnifex if he keeps this up- not physical, nor direct... but twisting and dangerous as her words are. Of course, the circle knows she won't do anything that causes lasting harm to him or their cause, but that doesn't mean her retribution is something to put aside lightly, even over a matter as minor as this.

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

His large, black eyes stare up at Sable. The pale silver rings that are his irises lock onto her icy blue eyes and there's a freezing silence. The doctor was not exactly predictable, and his reaction could have been anywhere between violence and a scathing remark. After the pause, the Carnifex moves his hands in a flourish and bows his head slightly. "My apologies, my blackened sister." He raises his head and looks at her again, "I know your work needs little in the way of backtracking with the girl... I simply get caught up very deep in my work." He says with what could be considered the least amount of sincerity possible, but the most sincerity the Carnifex has ever mustered.

[WhiteKnight777]

Grim

Grim was only infrequently in attendance at Carnifex's work. He seemed to find the actual process of transformation... boring. Instead, he haunted the woods, looking for the remains - or any evidence at all - of the one who had left before the fight began. He was... curious, perhaps, and cautious. But when the time came to unveil the finished creation, he was there. He observed the banter between Sable and the Carnifex with wry amusement, laughing aloud at both of them, leaning against one wall. He drew them in to his gaze, brushing his hair back away from the soulsteel patch that covered the yawning maw of myraid madness implanted in his face.

"Ah... brother and sister-in-darkness... sweet sibling bickering delight the ear. Even the chains of family are chains indeed... but who is the slave? The one who is bound, or he who picks up the chains and wraps him 'round and 'round till all is cold and clanking and empty?"

[The Demented One]

As Carnifex and Sable bicker, Chaya looks at her graceful wicked flesh, the black things of rot that hang from her mutilated stumps. Her arms are masterworks of necromusculature, rotted ligaments and tendons chained together and wound through ticking iron clockworks. Each finger ends in a cruel carving blade, each hand a bouquet blossoming with steel. Her legs are massive meaty things overwrought with rotting muscle, terminating not in feet, but jagged bladed wheels. She stirs from the surgical slab, testing her new unholy flesh. She places one wheel gingerly on the ground, balancing precariously as she shifts her weight onto it. Then she steps down with the other, pulling herself erect. Chaya stands high, the Blackened Chain Bitch reborn. "I walk!"

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

He snapped his head to the side to see Chaya on her feet and held his head back, and his arms up. Dark glee burst forth from the Carnifex as cackling laughter, "Yes! Yes, you do!" He cackling rang out throughout the makeshift fortress in which they stood. "Do you not feel accepted now? What did Little Beam ever give you? He gave you sunlight, he gave you what would bring you to us! He brought doom to you and the doom welcomed you!"

[Naquadah]

During the time of work, Kohl performs often for Chaya, mostly when she is too addled with pain or drugs to fully comprehend what she hears. He whispers to her in Carnifex's lab, and in between her religious instruction with Sable.

He speaks of past and future, and the Maw above all else. He tells stories of the Underworld, stories that seem to leak into him from Outside, from Below, and the voices rise and swell within his head and his heart in a rumbling growl of pseudo-pleasure. Stories of Stygia and Sijan, of empires never heard of in the mortal world, tombs and spectres, hekatonkhires and Deathlords.

And permeating it all, the Neverborn. He emphasizes the worship, and submission, to these unknowable beings, and of their compassion in choosing to free their Creation from the pain that binds and scores it. His words are soothing, instructional. Light and shadow play across his fingertips, and the air is alive with burnished images.

On the day she walks, Kohl is leaning carefully against the wall near Grim. He ignores Sable and Carnifax...prattle and posturing, as far as he is concerned. The Circle's demented mind and festered heart. They have their roles, and he his. He is the knife, wrapped in silk. The unseen stinger. A venom carefully deployed. His thoughts turn again to the older man that he and Grim were searching for. He wonders if the man was like Chaya: something more than mortal, but less than Chosen. Carnifex has given him a definition of this thing called a "God-Blood," and he wonders what he could learn with more close inspection of this curious race.

As Chaya stirs, Kohl covers his face with his fan, but his eyes bore into Chaya's, pierce her straight to her heart. He realizes they have created something here, something great and terrible. His eyes fill with hunger; his fangs grow unbidden. He licks them, feels the sharp pain against his tongue, the copper rush inside his mouth. He smiles around the blood. It has truly begun. Carnifex is talking...it never stops. As Chaya takes her first steps, Kohl's body snaps into a low bow. "My dear, you came here a mortal. And now you rise, as pyre-flame long buried and uncovered must rise, as an...an engine...the will of the Lords made manifest, and an emblem of their glory!"

[GryffonDurime]

Mulberry spends her days observing the comings and goings of the Deathknights: sometimes she's a church mouse and other times a snake. When he calls for her--at least, when he calls for her in a way that does not arouse her ire--she attends to Carnifex in the laboratory, stitching things or rearranging bits. Joints, especially--Mulberry's strength. All the while, the design of Carnifex's aesthetic intrigued and disgusted her: it was brilliant, to be sure, but hardly elegant. She dreamed of things that crawled on a thousand equal tendrils, necrotech things that flew on wings of mortal leather stretched thin like pale paper.

"I think I'm reaching for some cruelty in the light," she said to Carnifex one evening, settling into a nearby chair. "Some foulness made all the madder for snatching horror from the jaws of virtue. Did you ever feel that way?" she asked, and was gone before he could respond.

*

As Chaya stands, Mulberry slinks behind her under the cover of commotion between Carnifex and Sable.

"It's all a lot to take in at once, I'm sure. But I've got a gift of my own to bestow," she says. One pale finger strokes Chaya's cheek and all at once the girl is wrapped in a wondrous light like a dark prism. When it subsides, Chaya's hair undulates of it's own accord, each strand glistening silver with subtle barbs dripping an inky substance at every end. Her eyes are wide and amber as an owl's.

"Dreams. All just dreams, and they'll fade. But you can make them last, if you want. If you can."

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

Carnifex slips back into reality, forgetting glee for a moment as his Lunar mate alters the girl ever further. He looks at her with the same featureless expression only someone such as her can interpret without great on the Carnifex's part. Only she detected the confusion and twinge of anger in his eyes and what muscles remained. However, it did not take long for him to put the pieces together to some degree, "'Some foulness made all the madder for snatching horror from the jaws of virtue,' I suppose? What is it you've done to her?" Now his face was not streaked with cold rage, but rather an almost child-like amusement at her doing.

[WhiteKnight777]

Grim

Overhearing Mulberry's words, Grim had to grin, his head lolling to one side. "Strange things pour from your lips, oh broken moon. One might think they were even mine... still, stranger and stranger... Is the silver you see her hair, or a mirror?"

[The Demented One]

Chaya examines her newly motile hair, gently caressing her own flesh with its countless strands. "Strange gifts you bring me, Mulberry. What am I meant to do with this?" she wonders, extending a strand to brush the Lunar's face. "What am I meant to do with all of this? I was a slave, and then an acolyte, and now I am here. What do I become, now that my body is wrought with death and moon-madness, and my soul still lit with that god's light?"

[Naquadah]

Kohl's voice drifts from across the room. "What do you become? Why, just like us. A compromise, albeit temporary, on the long road from the end back to it. A vessel on your own tide, an avalanche of your own making. You are incarnate that which has no shape, given shape." He looks to Grim with narrowed eyes and shakes his head before continuing, trying to lower the poesy.

"You are more than the sum of your parts. There is power in you, and many-flavored. How those contrasts resolve...that shall determine what you are and what you can do. As of right now...embrace it all, and build it all as a glory to the dark will that gives movement to your body. Glorify that, and the view will become clear."

[AmberVael]

Sable watches quietly, stepping back into the background. All of the circle seemed to fight over influence with Chaya- no doubt she sensed that, a little. It became clearer and clearer that everyone wanted to twist her to their own ends, and frankly Sable wasn't sure if she wanted to put effort into attempting to maintain a hold that could be snatched away at any time.

Of course, it might also be viable to allow Chaya to come to her. If pressured and overwhelmed by the force of everyone else, she might seek out the one who had been least demanding of her- most persuasive and accepting. Yes, that would work. Sable smiled a little to herself, and simply kept watch over the others as they fawned over Chaya.

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

The Hollow Carnifex looks back and forth from Mulberry to Sable with a stillness to him he oh so uncommonly wears. The twitching that more common to him returns once he is done contemplating and he stands a bit taller, barely hunching at all and he begins to walk toward the corner, where his blackened and toothed weapon sits in it's elegantly morose weapons-rack sits. He clutches it in one of his equally black, metallic hands and rests it on the ground with the sound of metal digging into clay.
"I suppose my part is done for the girl." He waves another one of his arms offhandedly at them as he begins to walk away, "You have your way with her now. I've got training to do." He's rather calm now, as if all the excitement over Chaya's new improvements are diminished.

[The Demented One]

Weeks pass as you make ready your assault, training in your own dark arts and contributing to the necrotic war-machine that is Chaya. Of Little Beam's other companion, little is found–until Kohl ventures out into the deeper fens of the Shadowland by night, returning at dawn with the bone-gnawed corpse of a man, his half-rotted face frozen in fear. After a few hours of inspired work, Carnifex converts the sun-spoiled corpse into a surgical tool rack, a delightfully macabre work-cart that dangles from a ceiling-mounted hook by chains that hook through its tanned flesh with curving barbs. On its dangling, acid-cured entrails, spilled out from its belly, are hung a number of racks and cubbyholes, sufficient to hold all of Carnifex's implements–or, on its inaugural night, trays laden with cocktails and gobbets of exotic meats. A good time is had by all.

There is no word from the Mask of Winters through all this. Your mission remains fixed and unchanged–conquer Lookshy. The city's walls loom within sight of your own citadel when the shadowland mists part, as if the Dragon-Blooded Legion within held up their ramparts as a mocking battle-icon. The ghosts of Lookshy's own war-dead, the mad shades that haunt the Mourning Fields, seem quiescent, rising neither by day nor night. Your city awaits.

[GryffonDurime]

"If we are to turn our attentions to Looksy," Mulberry says to Carnifex one morning, "then it seems to me we will need three things: information, leverage, and a plan. Information is cheap enough: we can petition the Mask for access to his spy networks, and those of us a little...less...conspicuous, dear, can conduct reconnaissance. No reason to suspect a churchmouse or a crow, really. Leverage should be harder: your engines of death provide us some, but we can do more. Bind the ghosts of Lookshy's recent dead and extort their defense plans...find weaknesses...taint commanders. The plan, then, falls naturally from these efforts," she says, shrugging.

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

Mulberry speaks to Carnifex as he simply sits on a balcony on the outside of a dark room, tapping his teeth with a metal claw and gripping both arm-rests of his human-leather chair. "I suppose a direct assault just now would be most foolish, and reconnaissance is something best left to... someone less conspicuous." He turns to her, "You may travel through the streets inconspicuously if you so choose. However, if you were left in the hands of that treacherous Lookshy, it would be difficult to retrieve you... perhaps I should come along." He stood up and said, despite the unusual surplus of limbs and lack of facial tissue.

[Naquadah]

"Looking for inconspicuous, eh?" A voice rasps from overhead. "Well, pay little attention to me in that case....if you look my way at all, heeheehee."

Kohl peers down, barely visible, somehow crouched on a narrow outcrop of calcified bone several dozen feet overhead. From this vantage, his supernatural senses allow him to survey the shadowland and beyond. Lookshy is a sparkling cluster of gems on the horizon, seemingly a palace of virtue. But he knows better; knows what the Dragon-Blooded are capable of, at least in terms of political capital and social power. And he knows what they are incapable of: a lusty race, one and all, easily swayed to venality and pleasures of the flesh. Especially those who dedicate their lives to resisting.

Where once he would quail before their displeasure, now he felt as if he had little to fear from them. And to tread upon Gens Yushoto's lands, to bring the blight to the crucible where he was made...the Neverborn especially could see the delicious pleasure in it. He licked his lips, and the tips of his fingers, waiting for Carnifex to explode at the sudden intrusion, and savoring every moment of silence in between.

[AmberVael]

Most of Sable's time is spent meditating and resting, letting the abyssal essence of the underworld flow into her. However, every so often she moves out through the mourning fields, searching for a new corpse. They needed to storm Lookshy, and no matter their personal power, having aid would be useful.

Carnifex had his necrotic sciences... but Sable had magic. Time and time again, like clockwork, she rises from her meditations and moves out through the fields, slowly creating a grim harvest. It takes a great amount of time with her methods... but the horde of skeletons under her command grows steadily, until they number just over one hundred.

These skeletons move about at her direction, protecting the area she has claimed as her own, and fortifying it against intrusion, if only in rudimentary ways.

She meditates among her haunting whispers, possibly with Chaya nearby, letting her essence replenish itself.

[WhiteKnight777]

Grim

Grim nods slowly, considering the words of his circle-mate "Shadows slip into cracks, aye... quick and soft and quiet, hungry worms chewing through dead loam, maggots burrowing in dead flesh... Wriggling 'neath the surface, unseen. But the eye sees deeper, the eye sees true... the laughing fool digs up graves where rotting corpses lie and lays them bare, shows dead faces that stare accusingly at old friends and old foes..."

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

The Carnifex looks up quickly, and once the Day Caste comes into view he shakes his impure Jade cane at him in his black metal fist. "Insolent wretch! Clearly none of you know what I seek to be alone with the silk moth!" He lets out a rough sigh and looks forward, out over the balcony again. "Well, the plan is now clear to all but... Sable."
He puts a hand over the side of the railing and watches as the white-haired witch walks about the graveyard, breathing unlife into the bodies of the dead. Mulberry can clearly see joy showing in his face as he speaks, "It seems she has the right idea... of building an army."

[Naquadah]

Kohl cackles from his perch. "Insolent? Only irreverent. You forget, my dear surgeon, of the circumstances by which the Mask took me beneath his beautiful, tattered wings. I have paced the lurid grounds of Lookshy. I know its sights, its sounds., its smells...what makes its hackles rise and its nipples harden...its security protocol, its layout, the map writ upon its heart. Certainly the silk moth might turn into any number of things beneath the notice of the Princes of the Earth. But will she know what to look for, or from whose ear secrets may be pried, or the best way out if circumstances turn sour? No, she assuredly does not. I freely admit that times change, as do protocols. But if Mulberry shall go, who else is better than one who knows them, in some ways, better than they know themselves? And as we both know, my dear necrosurgeon, while your talents for war and occult are all-encompassing, you are not exactly...capable of acting in any sort of innocuous or incognito fashion."

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

He turns his head from the necromancer down below to Kohl as he speaks. "And you must know exactly why they earned my ire! I know protocol and method as well as any Magistrate or God of Lookshy!" He slams his cane down, leaving a crack in the floor, "Mulberry! I know your talents for manipulation of the flesh all too well. Craft for me a disguise, I am going to Lookshy for the last time before crushing it."

[GryffonDurime]

Mulberry sighs, not out of resistance to the command but out of a prescient sense of what would happen if Carnifex walked the streets of Lookshy. Still, she had learned which of his imperative tones could be taken as the closest he could come to asking politely, and so she stood behind him and took his face in her hands. She closed her eyes and slicked her palms with the bright oil of the Wyld and massages it in, picking up skin and shaping black flesh.

"I'm not a miracle worker," she says gruffly, then realizes. "Well, I am. But please do not expect to be mistaken for a pale young maid." She removes her hands and reveals: the darkened and sallow flesh of Carnifex's complexion has been transformed. No longer charred, it is the dark and weathered face of a man of the Deep West, a perpetual sunburn and the stern eyes of a seafarer.

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

The Carnifex feels something he has not in a long time, how own face. He moves his lips, his eyelids and flares his nose. He blinks for the first time in years, then looks at Mulberry. "Amazing, my silk-moth." He seems to slump even more, trying to look even older than he is as he walks with his cane out before him, and his other two arms folded under his robes. "We will collect the necromancer on our way out, there's no more time to waste." And he begins his descent to the surface of the Shadowland.

[Naquadah]

Kohl drops gracefully to the terrace on which Carnifex is standing, turns his attention to Mulberry. "Nicely done. I forgot, he is from Lookshy as well, isn't he? A former tech to the sorcerer-engineers? Makes sense he wants to go back...to see it with his own eyes, before he tears it apart with his own hands..." He smiles. "Though I worry about his...temper. Your Wyld-working may conceal his face, but nobody is going to mistake those limbs for anything other than some kind of soulsteel magitech. If something sets him off..." He trails off, leaving the unpleasant image to Mulberry's imagination.

[AmberVael]

Sable looks up as the others, specifically Carnifex, approach, rising from her work.
"Is there something that needs to be done?"
She asks, dusting off her hands and gesturing for her undead to continue finding skeletons and putting them aside.
"Or will we be spending more time here?"

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

He approaches her as she asks him, and she sees his face dramatically altered. His voice is very much the same however, as he answers. "We are traveling into the city to gather information. As much as it pains me to say, your vanguard may best be left behind."

[AmberVael]

"I see little need for them in terms of information gathering. We probably need no more attention than we'll already get."
In fact, Sable decides that she just might want to keep her distance from Carnifex while gathering information. Yes, a good plan indeed. Let him cause an uproar while she does the quiet talking elsewhere...

[WhiteKnight777]

Grim

Grim just grins and plucks the strings of his Sanxian "The minstrel moves silently as the cat. Darkness finds its home where sorrows are drowned, and whispers fly thick in smoke-filled air. The subtle ear listens, the quiet hunger gnaws on succulent brain-treats, the hidden eye sees dark and deadened souls."

[Naquadah]

Kohl catches Sable's eye after Carnifex passes and dramatically rolls his own. "It will be hard to pass from area to area without a color-coded pass. And I doubt any of us qualifies to get one in these late days. The guards will be vigilant, especially with this fortress so newly grown on their front lawn. Best to sneak inside with the day-workers and the foreign merchants, and figure out what to do once we get within the walls."

[AmberVael]

"I don't suppose we could obtain a pass more discreetly?"
Sable asks, raising an eyebrow at Kohl. That seemed somewhat like his area of expertise, or maybe her own. Probably more his.
"It would be nice to look a little more official."

[Naquadah]

Kohl walks close to Sable, speaking conspiratorily and pondering the next step in this plot. "If I can get one, perhaps one of us can duplicate it. I know they use color-coded passes that change color over time. I'm not sure how exactly that works, though, and the color changing makes it hard to forge one. I bet you or Carnifex could figure out how to make changing ink. Still, that is probably a better option to try that than to go for the zone gates anima blazing. Perhaps we should all enter...I will get badges if I can, and we can figure out how to duplicate them to advance beyond the public sectors. I could try to swipe some uniforms too...uniforms plus badges would help the charade and would get us further in to the belly of the beast."

[GryffonDurime]

"Charades. Uniforms. Honestly. Never send a deathknight to do a Lunar's job," Mulberry says, scratching away at her own nails. "If there someone in Lookshy, well-known by appearance, whose presence is considered unimpeachable? Point me to such a man or woman, I will drink their blood, and we shall enter as welcome guests. Otherwise, just point me to those who would keep such passes and they will be ours."

[AmberVael]

"A disguise. How clever. I'm certain no one has ever considered that before."
Sable observes dryly, looking at both Mulberry and Kohl.
"My intention was rather to obtain one in a way that looked legal, if not was legal. If one wanted to go in disguise, it would be better to be unnoticed and lower class- or a traveler or the like. Someone that wouldn't have a pass but they'd let in anyways. Surely there is someone like that."
She points out.
"That was the original plan, which seems sound. However, I find that having a little more sway or respectability, that is, capability to openly present oneself (which disguises certainly do not allow), would be quite useful in this situation."
The death knight contemplates it.
"I suppose one or two disguised people may work nicely... but it occurs to me that, done correctly, we might indeed just walk in through the front gate. It isn't as if Thorns is entirely unrepresented, after all, even if it is feared. While all of us doing that may be poor judgment, I think I could manage it, assuming I took proper precautions against an entire locale wanting to see me dead."
Sable muses, obviously not put off by the idea of being a target of hate.

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

The Carnifex stepped forward, dread contemplation now easily etched into his essence-mutated face and all three of his black arms up and out slightly. His eyes still had a knack for being over-large and over-widened, especially as he spoke and despite the eyelids that now bordered the spheres in his head. "Then perhaps you are best not left to yourself in such a task, O' dearest Midnight. If you were to do that, I believe it in all our best interest if the Circle were to keep an eye on things." He paused for a moment, in his familiar expression of contemplation, "I am even leaving behind my most glorious crimson spray, should the fact sway you in my favor."

[Naquadah]

"Some disguised, some not. Even better, start out not, stay in the public slums, then work our way in! Only problem...we won't get any Essence. Not without drinking..." He ponders. "To get a legal pass, you need to have certain business. Foreign merchants and guests are always restricted...you'll always need to be a native or a permanent merc to get past the public zones. As to representation...we could always be trying to buy supplies for Thorns. Grain, alcohol, and the like. It should get us in the front gate, if nothing else. But likely they would keep eyes on us at all times if we admitted to being from Thorns."

He blinks and his eyes light up as he looks around. "Carnifax...what did you end up doing with the god's body?"

[AmberVael]

Sable sighs at her circle.
"In what capacity would you be joining me, Carnifex?"
She looks at Kohl and shakes her head.
"You have entirely too little imagination. Grain alcohol? I am no petty merchant. I am a death knight, a servant of the void in the employ of our lord, and while I will not be entirely... accurate in my presentation of myself, I will not lessen the impact that my status should have. I intend to enter as a social and political combatant on par with any other representative of a great power. I may end up as a target of hate, with eyes and distrust laid upon me, but they will not turn me away, I think."
A smirk crosses her face.
"Well, they might. But would they pass up the chance to learn what is occurring? I doubt it... and I'd be entering their place of strength. They have little reason to fear me specifically, and I will not be issuing demands. I do need to think of a way to deflect suspicion- or at least reaction- to me being a spy, however."

[Naquadah]

"Hmm. Certainly Sable, I do not intend that all of us pursue th same method for infiltration. We shall more easily succeed if we all have our own story to tell. A merchant, a priest, a whore looking for work...all work equally well, all get us within the main gates. Less suspicion drawn to us one for one, than all together."

He considers her words about what she would do. "Here is an idea for you. Immaculate philosophers of Lookshy are eager to engage in religious debate. You'll find their beliefs on their world similar to the Realm's Order, but markedly different. That is always an angle to pursue."

[GryffonDurime]

"I see now why you are called deathknights," Mulberry mulls, "you do not kill, you do not maim. You simply talk until your foe is dead of age. I'm going now, Carnifex. Do try not to make too much of a mess of the city just yet."

With that, Mulberry throws open the shudders of the nearest window and leaps out: one instant a falling woman, the next a rising kestrel. She revels briefly in the power of her new wings, riding the updrafts with an easy heart. Lookshy unfurls before her like a banner, and Mulberry descends upon the city, watching with her stolen eyes.

[Naquadah]

Kohl rolls his eyes as Mulberry departs, and continues walking. "Ever the bird, flitting off without a plan. And ever the snakes, following and scheming." He sighs. "Let us talk and walk, my Circle-mates. Let us have a plan by the time we are within eyeshot of the walls, and execute it. We should meet up inside, and if Mulberry still lives, attempt to contact her and proceed. And we must needs figure out goals for this excursion. What information do we seek? What sabotage do we wish to bring? Will sweet Death claim any of Lookshy's stalwart yet foolish defenders? Et cetera..."

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

"Let the silk-moth be off, we are cursed with legs that see full use." He lets out what could be either a roar or a sigh, and begins walking. "Come." As he leaves, he puts the hood up over his head, takes a pair of brown leather gauntlets to put over his unusual arms and instructs his Gears to keep a watch on the defenses and most of all, Chaya.
The Circle begins to walk out of the borders of the Shadowlands with even the dim sunlight baring down on them once they reach the border, the Sun sinking in the west and the welcoming darkness approaching from the east, marred only by the stars. Before them stands Lookshy, a city-state-fortress just waiting to be bitten and have the life drained from it. The Carnifex approaches the massive Jade gates that stand before them.

[The Demented One]

The fortified city walls of Lookshy are a marvel of architecture from the Era of Dreams, a patchwork of indestructible First Age alloys reinforced with brick and mortar where they have fallen to age and misuse. Each gateway is overhung by a canopy of jade sculpted into a set of draconic jaws, manned by a pair of enlightened mortals in powered armor. They brandish force pikes as you draw near, essence weapons still maintained and operational, their puissance perhaps enough to match any of yours. Both women watch you approach closely, tightly-knotted braids of hair drifting in the wind off the Inland Sea.

"Welcome to Lookshy, travelers." speaks the taller of the pair, an amber-skinned women of obviously Dragon-Blooded descent. "Declare your arms to us and speak what cause you have for entrance, and you will be admitted into the Outer City." Her companion, a darker-skinned woman whose leaf-green hair obscures her eyes, remains silent, training her force pike on Carnifex, whose cloak does much to arouse her suspicions.

[AmberVael]

Sable, meanwhile, has arrived separately from her circle- at least, separately from those who do not wish to join in her somewhat audacious plot. Realizing that showing up alone and attempting a grand entrance would fail quite miserably, she opted to actually bring a few of her recently created skeletons- wisely cloaking them heavily in concealing robes, and otherwise preventing their real appearance from being at least blatant. Someone might know that they're undead, but that would be quite different from seeing that they are.

With a small procession in tow (a simple decet of heavily cloaked skeletons), Sable sweeps confidently towards the gate- and presumably when halted, she speaks openly, with smooth, unwavering words.

"I come as a representative of the Lord of Thorns. I request an audience with someone suitable for my station, that I might elaborate on my presence here."

[The Demented One]

The well-clad sentinels exchange a brief glance, uncertain how to react. The night of horrors that toppled Thorns is legend and nightmare throughout all Creation, and none have not heard of the monstrosities said to serve the Mask of Winters. And yet Sable's words are backed with iron confidence, a surety of command that reaches down into the pitiful mortal minds of the guards and seizes the strings of their subconscious. "You...you may enter." speaks the foremost guard. "I will call your escort, of course. You will be taken to speak with the appropriate personnel. Do not leave your escort, do not draw arms, do not so much as spend the least mote." she speaks, harsher than it is wise to address one of the Abyssal Exalted.

She draws down on a hempen cord that coils back into a recess within the wall, tolling a clarion. By the time she opens the gates to you, a phalanx of guards–mortal sentinels with power armor and essence weaponry, led by a handful of Terrestrial Exalted–has formed behind them. The gateway sentry briefly explains your arrival to the foremost Dragon-Blood, and his eyes flash red for a moment. Finally, though, he bids you enter. "Deathknights. Are you so bold as to stride openly into Lookshy? To come in the name of that unspeakable monster? Very well, then. Lookshy honors the accords of peace and diplomacy, Lookshy is a civilized nation. Come with me. You will be given a meeting in the embassies of the General Staff, you will be given the audience you seek. And if you reject the accords of peace, if you prove yourselves the monsters of a monster, then the entire Seventh Legion will come down upon you. Thorns was weak. We are not. Come."

[AmberVael]

Sable bows formally and politely to the dragon-blooded who addressed her, not returning any of his apparently raw emotions.
"I thank you for the hospitality you display, even in the face of that you find reason to despise. I promise you that I will not give you cause to regret it."

She has adopted a cordial manner, and gives a snap of her fingers that signals to her minions to arrange themselves so that they are interspersed with her escort - leaving them close at hand, but easily watched over by the guardians of Lookshy. No need to spook her hosts, after all... well, except maybe a little.

"Might I have your name, soldier?"
The deathknight asks of the dragon-blood, a hint of curiosity in her voice.

[The Demented One]

"Of course, ambassador. Karal Da Shan, Gunchei of the Home Guard. I will not bore you with the details of my lineage or service, nor will I ask your own names." His curtness makes no attempt to belie obvious contempt, and it is only with visible effort that he restrains the hatred that would burn within his eyes. He leads you through the grid of wide roads, lanes of solid stone construction, frequently interrupted by sturdy wooden archways that bridge the many rivers and rivulets that cut through Lookshy. The outer ring of the city is of low stone, its buildings unimpressive yet utterly utilitarian. The rim that demarcates the border between outer and inner city is the usual terminus of any outsider's journey, but the Home Guard Commander leads you further still, through the gatehouses of Lookshy's inner walls and into the Upper City.

"The Fourth Ring Of Lookshy, the Foreign Quarter." announces the Dragon-Blood as you step out into the district cramped with watchtowers, temples, and merchant shops. He speaks the same introduction as you pass into the Third Ring, and finally the Second Ring, the only words he speaks. It is within the Second Ring of Lookshy that you find your destination, a small office on the outermost fringe of the quarter. Loathe as he is to even allow your entrance into the Upper City, Da Shan would sooner disembowel himself than let you any closer to the war-city's heart than necessity bids. He bids the five of you–or rather, those of the five who let themselves be seen–enter a squat and unimportant-seeming building hewn of grey stone, a minor administrative organ of the Liaison Directorate. "Enter in your own time, ambassadors. My unit will remain stationed here to retrieve you once negotiations have been concluded. Present yourselves to the staff secretary, and your audience will be granted."

[Naquadah]

Kohl walks, robed along with the skeletons, wearing a simple wooden mask about his face. He smirks at Sable's ploy to get them within the walls...surely Mulberry is within already, but he knows she does not know this city. And none of them really know what they are looking for. His eyes flit back and forth to the guards, and several times he subtly switches places with other members of Sable's procession until he is on one of the edges, closest among the mortals and far away from the Dragon-Blooded, amid a small cluster of Sable's entourage.

He does not care to enter the building, does not care to listen...not from the inside, at least. His eyes take in every shadow, explore every tiny rivulet where light dies not exist. In the bustle of separating entourage from the interspersed guard unit, he prepares to secret himself in one of these shadowy hollows and begin exploring the city he was once enslaved in.

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

The Carnifex took all his will and strength to keep his third arm held tightly against his back under his heavy robes and to keep himself from gutting the lead guardsman with the razors that were hidden so well within his hand. He knew the contempt he feels burning into him from the Terrestrial host would have been rained upon him tenfold by his Circle should he remove said host. The most he can do is forget the newfound muscles in his face(leaving him looking a bit more harrowing than any of the masked dead) and be gracious.
"We thank you, lords and ladies of Lookshy." He said only, and followed his Circle.

[GryffonDurime]

Mulberry departs from the company of her circle as some of them enter: she has watched them from rafters and rooftops, her kestrel form peeking out over eaves and arches.

She flutters away, further and further into Lookshy's holiest of holies, searching for a target of seemingly obvious importance, unimpeachable credentials--and most importantly of all, someone of solitude. It can't be a Terrestrial; for all her might, Mulberry knows the limits of her subtlety and the assassination of a Dragon-Blooded will surely draw attention. She soars over the First Quarter, dipping low to the ground when she thinks she spots an older patrician or some other figure of interest. Her talons hold tightly to tiled rooftops as she lowers herself down, down. Mortals fail to notice the inoffensive comings and goings of beasts.


Perception + Investigation
[roll0]

[AmberVael]

Sable inclines her head to Karal Da Shan.
"Your vigilance will not go unnoticed. I commend you for you assistance and duty."

She says, acting almost oblivious to his contempt- or perhaps, noting it, and regarding him more highly for doing his duty and holding to his codes despite it. Still, she does not spend any more time on him, but instead proceeds into the designated building, keeping a discreet eye out for anyone who might follow or watch them, and just to examine the building itself. It doesn't quite seem a suitable place for someone of her claimed status, but then again, she was a hated enemy... to enter at all was a triumph.

[Naquadah]

As Sable enters and her entourage begins to clumsily disentangle itself from the guard unit, one of the skeletons finds itself tripping toward a guard. In the ensuing confusion and apologies, a shadow flits between group and building, darting behind the backs of the mortal guards and visible only for a heartbeat, before it's gone and melded into the darkness cloaking the entire area.


Since I forgot to do it before, here's my Stealth roll. My plan is to use the confusion of separating the guard unit from the envoys that one person could slip between a couple of robes and into one of the building's shadows in the blink of an eye, where nobody can really see it. And if I'm spotted, my excuse is that I tripped while going to look for the head.
[roll0]

[The Demented One]

Entering the Liaison sub-office's main hall, you find it a bleak spartan building. Unadorned walls of grey stone are the default, their only decorations they official notices and procedural protocols posted on corkwood slats. As you arrive, a mortal dressed in secretarial saffron comes to retrieve you, wordlessly leading you through the halls of the building. He comes to a huge redwood door, twice the size of a man, and lifts an iron rod from a well-polished rack on the wall. He pushes the door open with the metal rod, and bids you enter. The conference hall is just as sparse as the rest of the office, dominated by a massive pentagonal table. At its far side sits one of Lookshy's ambassadors, a Dragon-Blood whose hatred is only revealed by the drumbeat of her fingers on the table's mirrored surface.

"Greetings, ambassadors. I am told that Thorns wishes to enter into diplomatic relations, no? Unbelievable, but nevertheless, it falls to me to conduct official negotiations. I'm sure the Home Guard captains have already given you enough of threats and saber-rattling, so let us dispense with that. We both know what happens if you raise arms within this city. Now, why have you come here to negotiate? What terms do you seek?" The diplomat's tone speaks to just how much credence he gives Sable's ruse, while the grand daiklave that lies on the table before him is the threat he does not bother to speak.

While Sable, Carnifex, and Grim sit down to negotiate, Kohl stalks through the shadows that hang low beneath the buildings, having slipped away from the guard regiment. For all that he remains unseen, the circumstances are against him–outside of the clinging shade he creeps through, the sunlight burns brightly, and the people of Lookshy bustle and crowd with more eyes than he can hope to hide from forever. But for so long as he keeps to the beshadowed alleyways that run between these minor offices, he is all but invisible.

Mulberry, on the other hand, flies through the open sunlight, seen but not recognized for what she truly is. Soaring into the First Ring of Lookshy, she spots a figure whose ornaments and treasures speak to some high rank–he is clad in flowing robes sculpted from essence itself, and followed by a living construct, what seems a woman of moonsilver and black jade. He makes no glances skyward, not even noticing the kestrel soaring innocently overhead as he hastens towards the Aviary, the dry dock of Lookshy's aerial fleet.

[WhiteKnight777]

Grim

Grim laughed, the bells on his motley jangling softly "Why does the night come? Why do shadows fall? Why do bellies rumble and men die, and why does the cold wind blow? All things come in time, aye, aye, all things and no things, that be the way of the world."

[AmberVael]

The necromancer and voice of the void smiles gently, sliding forward into a chair as she dons the most graceful and proper manners, adopting a tone which is smooth and genuine. She seeks to relax and flatter, to lie without ever letting untruth slip from her lips.

"While your guards clearly did not like our presence, they did their job well. I am aware that we have developed a... less than pleasant reputation," Sable says delicately, "And so I am pleased enough to have been allowed entrance and come this far unmolested, if not unquestioned."

"I do not come here as a representative for Thorns, exactly, but as a representative of its lord. Nor do I come to dictate terms- I have more respect for the people of Lookshy than to believe they would cow before demands. There is no army at my back, or threat looming behind me besides horrific tales which have spread about my kind."

Sable spreads her hands to gesture openly, symbolically presenting sincerity and an open nature.
"It is because of these thoughts that I have come, ambassador. Tales of terror and monsters are all that are known of us, and our army is one of the few things that has been seen. There are those who are afraid of us, and those who hate us without ever learning more than hearing vague stories that have passed from mouth to mouth.
"Lookshy knows how stories can be spun falsely. You have been slandered and thought backwards, but every man, woman, and child in Lookshy knows the triumphs and grand nature of their home. Lies and propaganda- deceit and unfortunate circumstances- lead people to despise and disparage others without cause or evidence."

Smiling confidently, and hopefully, Sable presents her words logically and reasonably, with good faith that is hard to ignore.
"And that is why I have come. I know what is told of us, and it pains me to hear it. I know this is not the way I am, and while I cannot speak for everyone- for there are differences among every group of people- I can show myself, and demonstrate my nature and beliefs, and show that what is taught about us is unjust. I do not ask for anything other than the chance to present myself and let others draw their own conclusions, rather than learn from horror stories and rumors.
"You have been kind and gracious enough to let me come here, and acted with reason and fairness this far. All I ask is for this one request- to let me remain here for a time, and let me show the truth of who our people really are."

After that, she glances at Grim and gives a small, almost sad sigh and smile to the ambassador.
"Please forgive my friend, he is not... quite right of mind."

[Naquadah]

Kohl stalks the shadowed alleys, looking for a certain type of person. A scullery maid for a Gens out on an errand, perhaps, or a group of young mortal soldiers still too green to see trouble when it looks at them. He will wait for some such person to pass near the mouth of an alley, and then he will strike.

[The Demented One]

The diplomat is taken aback by Sable's open and respectful address, enough so to disregard Grim's cryptic chatter. She off-handedly removes the daiklave from the table, sheathing it at her side. "You embarrass me, ambassador. It is so easy to see the lies spoken against one's people, and yet to never question those spoken of others. I know what happened at Thorns, but surely you cannot be judged solely for that. Forgive my prejudices, and let us speak on amiable terms. My name is Amilar Zhou."

[AmberVael]

A bit of tension goes out of Sable, and she smiles more openly, quite relieved that she wasn't going to have an army after her.
"I do not fault you, nor your people. It has become quite pervasive, and I do admit that there are some who do not really promote our best side..."

Her eyes flick to Grim a little obviously- but she counts on him appearing a little harmless, if odd, to prevent any bad assumptions from being made.

"It is a pleasure to meet you, Ambassador Zhou. According to the customs of my kind, I have given up my name, but others know me as Sable Scion."

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

The Hollow Carnifex watches the Lookshy woman before him with contempt hidden behind blankness. His gaze is, at best, unnerving but that's to be expected from supposed Thorns natives. "I have followed this same tradition and have forsaken my name. I would prefer to be referred to by my profession. You may call me the Doctor." Despite every fiber of his body and soul screaming at him in protest, he speaks civilly and without note of threat in his gravelly voice.

[The Demented One]

Amilar Zhou attempts to smile, despite her still-lingering misgivings. For all she makes of friendship, the unease on her face is obvious, if dwindling. "You forake your names? An interesting custom, I can scarcely conceive of it. How do you know your lineage, your families? Oh, but I prattle on. Perhaps we might best begin with the Fall of Thorns? Let me put from my mind what I have heard of that night, that you might understand what it was to you? The General Staff understands your lord, the Mask of Winters, to intend nothing less than absolute aggression against the nations of the Scavenger Lands. Is this not so?"

[AmberVael]

"We have great communion with those who have passed on." Sable begins, using the more indirect method of referring to the dead in order to lighten impact of the implication of it. "Those who have experienced this begin to learn what fleeting things names really are. Creation witnesses hundreds of names for the same things, even at the same time. It is only sensible that names would have less value to us."

She smiles in a friendly matter, and then shakes her head at the impression of the Mask of Winters.
"It is unfortunate that our first real contact with these lands was aggressive. It has left the wrong impressions, no matter the intention. However, there is no one better to answer this question than I... because I was there when it happened."

The necromancer lets this statement hang dramatically for a moment, smiling a little comfortingly.
"I was not among the servants of the Mask of Winters at the time- in fact, I was wholly unaware of his existence. Thorns was my home..."
Her expression belies the fact that despite it being home, it was nowhere near comforting to her.
"Our city had become increasingly corrupt. While it had become great, it began to hold its weight on those who could not support it, while degrading the very people who made it all possible. We were in steep decline, and those in power only hurried that decline with their decadence and ruthless greed."

Having painted this ugly picture, Sable's expression changes, a small smile appearing there. It is not a kind smile, but perhaps that is to be expected, considering the topic.
"Into this scene came the Mask of Winters."

She shifts back, trying to become a little more dispassionate and objective.
"His methods overpowered the city, and were, perhaps, too potent; however, he swiftly cleansed the city of its flawed and rotten system. Perhaps he could be considered a vigilante, but there is not a single doubt in my mind that what he did was justice. In my life at Thorns, I was one of those who was oppressed and downtrodden so that the rest might rise high. I worked thanklessly and profited not at all from it- so I do not deny that I found grim satisfaction in the things that occurred that day.

"But I want to impress on you that what occurred there was no vicious, conquering slaughter, but a cleansing. If a limb rots and decays, do you leave it alone, or attempt to cure it with herbs? No, it must be amputated. It is uncomfortable, but cannot be denied. So it was with Thorns."

Sable's words are dark, but certain, and invoke justice and duty- something that the soldiers of Lookshy should be quite familiar with. This was the sort of thing a soldier must learn. Yes, you do a grim deed, but it cannot be shirked or avoided.

"We are unfortunately uncommon, but Thorns is not entirely unrepresented. I believe a representative addressed the Council of the Concordant? You will find that he said many of the same things that I did, though unfortunately he was too accusatory of others. Still, I can only imagine his reactions to what he had heard. I cannot find it in myself to wholly blame him for his words.

"The Mask of Winters does not desire conquest, but seeks to spread order and justice where it must be spread. It is unfortunate the methods we must sometimes turn to, but the cause is just, and we must not let uncomfortable necessities turn us away from what is right."

[Naquadah]

Minutes begin to pass. Kohl's eyes bore straight ahead, watching everyone who crosses in front of the alley. His eyes rake across maids, messengers, young soldiers walking to and fro, til they finally settle. The uniformed man coming this way is walking unsteadily, listing a bit. From here, Kohl can smell the aroma of alcohol wafting off of him. He wears the bars of an adjutant of some sort. Kohl gives him the once-over; no elemental markings, and he's carrying a travel badge. Perfect.

As the young man passes the alley, it is simplicity itself for Kohl to mimic the voice of a young woman, enticing him into the alley. Drunk and muddled, the youth complies with the ruse. A short conversation ensures, where Kohl expertly gropes his prey, crooning, obtaining his name, rank, command, everything important. And moments later, there is nary a sound to be heard save the slight scraping of a barrel moments later. Then Kohl appears, straightening the uniform and tucking his silken armor in underneath, wiping the last drops of blood onto a handkerchief, retracting his fangs and deciding on his next course of action.

[The Demented One]

"I see. I fear that is quite a contrast to what most of Lookshy would think of the Lord of Thorns, as he styles himself. The General Staff has become convinced from past diplomatic dealings that any alliance or mutual non-aggression with him would be impossible." Zhou speaks frankly, discussing a number of failed diplomatic ventures. Knowing what you do of your master, you are not particularly surprised by any of them. "And yet, it is to our advantage to negotiate a peace. Tell me, ambassadors, what authority has been invested in you with regards to this meeting? While I cannot commence treaty negotiations myself, of course, I can arrange for a diplomatic summit between you and the suitable officials within the Liaison Directorate, if the Mask of Winters has given you leave to speak for him."

Elsewhere, Kohl expertly disposes of Nitei Gunzel of the Home Guard, breaking through skin and jugular and spine with one solid bite. Dressed in the uniform of the soldier whose corpse now lies limp in the gutters, he strides out into broad sunlight, his uniform and papers all in order. And across the city's walls, Mulberry follows her current mark past the gates of Lookshy's famed Aviary, changing back to her silkmoth shape as she flutters into a dock filled with magitech skyships, wonders unheard of throughout the rest of Creation. As she hovers in midair, the Dragon-Blood berates the crew of sorcerer-engineers maintaining the vessels, castigating them for their failures with something called the Skywolf.

[AmberVael]

"My lord has given me full authority to negotiate with Lookshy as I will."
Sable says, with complete honesty.
"In the end, he only desires that there be peace."

Through the complete dismantling of Lookshy as it is, of course, but no need to bring up how drastic his goals are yet. Besides, Sable sees little reason why she can't do that peacefully... after all, if she can get Lookshy to go willingly to its grave, then all the more glory to the Void and its Neverborn heralds.

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

"Ahem." The Carnifex finally speaks up after many moments of silence between the two. "I would also like to make an offer, if our gracious host would be willing to listen." He says, gesturing slowly to the Terrestrial on the other side of the table. "Oh behalf of the artisans of Thorns, I would like to express an offer of trade to this city, so full of technology. My trade outside of surgery is in fact, of craftsmanship. My specialty in such a field... is the stitching of necrotic flesh to artificial materials to create quick, efficient models. Perhaps this interests you..."

[The Demented One]

Zhou allows herself a smile. "Excellent. I will speak to my superiors on your behalf, and see what arrangements can be made for a summit. An infallible messenger will be sent to notify you of your invitation, of course." She considers Carnifex's offer with perhaps more muted enthusiasm, but nevertheless responds, carefully concealing whatever visceral disgust might roil within her gut. "Oh. That could be very valuable to Lookshy's armory, I suppose. The Seventh Legion has constantly endeavored to expand away from any reliance on magical technology, and Thorns' own unique industry would certainly be of interest in that regard. If we can secure peace and trade treaties at the same time, I'm sure it would be a masterstroke for both our cities."

While Carnifex discusses the finer points of necromantic technology, his mate stalks her Dragon-Blooded prey through the halls of the Aviary. His name, she's inferred, is Maheka Yoti, an elite sorcerer-technician of the Home Guard, and the apparent overseer of a wide range of Lookshy's aerial arsenal. She follows him to his offices in the Aviary, and cannot help but be sickened by their palatial luxury. A half-dozen rooms, flowing wall-scripts, plush couches, full-length mirrors, amphorae of rice-wine, and all other sundry pleasures festoon it, despicable decadence for a Dragon-Blood of Lookshy. After a few loathsomely dull hours of watching him fill out forms, Mulberry is finally pleased to see him take a late-noon nap, crawling under a finely-woven blanket of Haltan alpaca, and falling asleep on one of his couches. The sole obstacle between her and him is his armiger, the sorcerous construct of silver and jade that stands watch over him, her face a perfectly smooth mask of shimmering metal.

[AmberVael]

Zhou might notice that Sable has a somewhat similar reaction to the mention of Carnifex's work, but she lets it pass without commenting.
"What would you suggest we do while we wait? Surely the summit is not the only place I can negotiate at? Or perhaps I could speak with you in more detail about any questions you might have? I've no doubt it would be useful to have someone more informed capable of representing us to their fellow citizens, if only informally."

[GryffonDurime]

Mulberry retreats to the office's adjoining foyer, invoking her Deadly Beastman Transformation. The fire opals on her girdle gleam softly as she forces change upon change itself, and as her skin slickens to gray, her legs meld and lengthen into a great serpent's tail instead of wings. She shrugs, testing her new form covertly as she lets the tail braid neatly around a full-length mirror, caressing it softly as her hands curve with the dark hues of necromancy. She turns at last and lunges all at once through the doorway, her eyes bright and burning with Lunar fury.

Her first target is clear: she hefts the mirror-portal with her tail and curves around the automaton, attempting to trip her sideways into the open gateway. As she does this, she aims for the man and fires a bolt of silvered essence webbing at him. Mulberry's anima blares madly, a thousand silver moths weaving strange webs in the air that fade into mist.


Alright, in order:
8m for DBT + Gift
18m, 1w for the portal
8m for my Excellency

First attack, called vs the Automata:
[rollv]5d10[rollv] + 2 Excellency Successes + 1 Willpower Success

Attack vs Captain Fancypants
[roll0] + 2 Excellency Successes

Willpower: 6/8
Limit: 0/10
Curse of the Hungry Wolverine

Essence ●●●●
Personal: 0/18 (0 Committed)
Peripheral: 22/43 (7 Committed)

Portal is open for 2 more actions, attacks on Mulberry suffer a -1 penalty from her anima.

[Naquadah]

Kohl checks his new pockets and belt for any information, checks the name on the papers and begins to mentally create an identity for himself, secreting his retracted weapon up the sleeve of the uniform. He pauses to remember the layout of the city. After he believes he has his bearings, he heads for the District of the Legion, hateful plans swimming through his head.

((Can you tell me about what time of day it is? I was still under the impression it was night, but wanted to verify))

[The Demented One]

"No, ambassadors. At the moment, the duty of Liaison to Thorns is my bailiwick alone, and the present state of presumed hostilities between our two cities forbids any relations beyond this. Until I arrange for a formal summit, any further diplomacy on your part with anyone other than me would be considered a crime against Lookshy. If you wish to speak at greater length with me, I am willing to listen–or if time's urgency presses you on, for this evening hour grows late, I could give you a courier address to receive your messages." Ambassador Zhou plays with a small magitech charm that dangles from her wrist, a miniature hourglass filled with blue sand. Only Carnifex recognizes its displays from his days in Lookshy, reading it at the seventeenth hour.

Kohl, having thoroughly familiarized himself with his new facade, makes his way into the the District of the Legion, the ancient business district of Lookshy now converted into the administrative infrastructure of the Seventh Legion. Many buildings that were once storefronts and markets have been converted into bureaucratic offices, a metamorphosis sometimes left incomplete–more than one directorate office is housed in the upper apartments of a former store. The guards stationed here are in much heavier force than those of the Liaison Sub-Bureau, each official entranceway manned by a platoon of power armored elites. And yet for all the security, Kohl walks through the streets unquestioned by the light of evening. For now.

Elsewhere in the famed Aviary of Lookshy, Mulberry caresses the weave of Creation with the touch of death, cracking the silvered mirror that stands between life and death. As she feels the winds of the Underworld suck at her face, a ragged gasp out from the mirror's face, she makes good her ambush. With a lash of her tail, she sends the construct armiger toppling, catching it within her black portal. A mere flick of her wrist is enough to snare the sleeping Dragon-Blood in a loop of silvery essence, the argent filament easily bearing his weight as the No Moon drags him down into the Underworld. The laggard does not even stir from his stuporous opium dream. Mulberry drops the mirror face-down on the ground, trapping the pair within, and idly waits for the portal to seal itself shut, counting the seconds. At the last moment, she flips the mirror up with one swish of her tail, and dives in, letting Creation close off behind her.

[AmberVael]

"An interesting law. I will have to consider its purpose and nature."
Sable says as she hears Zhou's warning.
"As you say, it is growing later, and I have no wish to tire you with formality, and not everyone is quite as comfortable with these arrangements as I am."
Her eyes flicker over Grimm and Carnifex before returning to Zhou.
"For my part, however, I am eager to continue, though perhaps official negotiations can be suspended until the summit."

[GryffonDurime]

Mulberry settles neatly across from the slowly awakening engineer, carefully arranging the remnants of the automaton to make her point abundantly clear: do not muck about with me.

"I'm glad you could rejoin the world of the waking, even if it is here in the world of the dead," Mulberry says. "Incidentally, that's where you are. Just to be sure we're clear: I am Anathema, this is the Underworld, and your only hope to survive is to sit down and mind your manners. Move towards me with even the smallest hint of malice and--" she wobbles the machine by the wrist, letting the moonsilver clink against her chassis. "Now. Let's talk. I'm something of a collector, and today? Lucky boy--I want your story. If I really like it, I might even let you go. For now, though? Let's start with name, rank, and serial number and move into the details of who you are, where you came from, and what you're working on in the docks."

[The Demented One]

After what seems like weeks of diplomatic niceties and bureaucratic wrangling, Sable, Carnifex, and Grimm finally conclude their business at the embassy. They set back out through the streets of Lookshy, escorted back to the city gates by Gunchei Da Shan, and followed by their own lifeless retinue. A cloaked figure slips into their ranks as they leave the Second Ring, his face hidden beneath a heavy hood. Kohl. Tucked into his pockets are countless useful papers–a roster of the Home Guard, a tactical plan of deployment for Lookshy's Field Forces, and other secret documents. You find yourselves rejoined by Mulberry only after you leave the city proper. She flutters down in moth-shape, only resuming human form once you've left eyesight of the city's walls. Her lips are faintly stained with red. Mission completed.

The passage back to the Mourning Fields is easily accomplished, and you slip into the shadowland's boundaries just as the night has truly begun. Once more you suspire the comforting breath of the Underworld, once more you know its strange and baleful constellations. The Sign of the Charlatan is ascendant in the House of Silence, signifying the theft of secrets, or else exploitation by a superior. And beneath the light of that wicked, seven-starred constellation, you see your fortress-home ringed with a brood of dark monstrosities, hulking war-machines of dead flesh. Each stands at a yeddim's height, a hundred hands clutching a hundred black daiklaves. An honor guard fit only for a Deathlord.

And as you enter, moving past the silent and unmoving necromachs, you see your lord, your liege, your master. The Mask of Winters sits upon a throne of anthracite and ebon, borne up by a dozen hungry ghosts, and looks down on you with ink-black eyes. His infamous mask and namesake shows its splendid face, a countenance of beauty. The Deathlord is pleased; or at least, not angered. He bids you kneel before him, and speaks with a voice hollow and rasping, unspoken by any tongue or throat.

"My Deathknights, kneel before your lord. I would know how goes the conquest of Lookshy, how go your schemes and machinations. I have need of an especial service, suitable only to servants of whom my trust can be its utmost."

[AmberVael]

Sable immediately kneels, going down on one knee and bowing her head in respect. It was not feigned, and anyone who knew her would understand that she did indeed feel loyalty to the Mask of Winters. Perhaps she was not a complete pawn to him, but his liberation of her life in Thorns had earned her quite literally undying devotion.

"We have begun initial steps to measure and work against the city's defenses, my lord. I have opened up parley with them in the hope of confusing and turning them against each other, or bringing some of them to us. It is my hope that Lookshy will willingly leap into Oblivion.

"However, as it is doubtful that such means alone will suffice, I have begun to raise an army with which to conquer the city. It is a meager beginning, but you can see my handiwork around us."

Her skeletons work methodically across the Mourning Fields, uncovering corpses that she can add to their numbers when she has the time and power to devote to her necromancy. The way they conduct themselves and arrange the corpses is almost reverent and pious, lining them up in rows, in shallow ditches that the create to hold the flesh that will slough away when Sable wrenches their bones out of them. It gives the impression of hundreds of shallow graves, with each corpse neatly waiting for its resurrection.

"If there is anything more that I can do in your service, I will gladly obey."

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

The Hollow Carnifex kneels slowly, habitually taking it easy on his bones. Age was no longer a malady of his body, but it surely has taken it's tole on his psyche. Two black hands rested on the ground as a third begins picking at his fake face, one mutated onto his skull. His finger found a pit and kept digging, half-clotted blood oozes out and he just digs deeper and deeper, peeling bits of flesh off in bloody strips. As Sable speaks he does this, and by the time she has finished, the Carnifex rips the remaining skin from his face with a sound similar to wet paper being torn. Beneath it was his normal, skeletal visage.

"My apologies, my dearest Mask. Feigning flesh like that is far from a comfort, undoing it was... necessary." He clears his throat, a gobbet of clotted gore having managed to get caught in his throat somehow. "I have also begun work for a trade agreement. I have promised samples of necrotechnology, which I will engineer to carry a plague second only to the great contagion." He spoke calmly, the blood still stuck to his face like a sickening paste. He seems to speak with slightly less than the level of respect a Deathknight should provide their Master.

[WhiteKnight777]

Grim

The Grim Fool gives his deathlord a bow - but as with everything the capering jester does, it is swathed in a dual meaning. His lips crawl like worms in an obsequious smile Maggots crawl through the dragon's guts... but the dragon is strong. mayhaps we can find a corpse-white blade to plunge at the beast's heart - but we must strike at heart at head and hands all at once.

[The Demented One]

The Mask of Winters does not smile. His facade allows for no expression of happiness, nor does his flesh still have the tendons to twist lips into a grin. But his satisfaction is apparent in his gesture as he bids you rise, commanding you to your feet. He too rises, towering above you all on the obsidian dais of his throne.

"All according to my plans. Excellent. I was wise to trust you, my minions. Now, I speak of a burden heavy to shoulder, a task that will threaten you in flesh and in soul. To the East of the Grey River's meanderings lie an ancient city, ruined of old and now desolate to all life. Denandsor it is called, a city left abandoned since the First Age faded into darkness. None walk their unafraid, none walk their undeterred. None know what secret horror haunts dead Denandsor, what black curse falls on those who enter it."

"None, save for I, the Mask of Winters! Within that unhappy city's ruins broods an ancient and formidable hekatonkires, the corpse of a soul never born into this world. I would have my loyal servants venture to Denandsor, to break and bind this hekatonkires to my service. If triumph there is to you in this endeavor, it will be a world-ending weapon in your arsenal, a certain trump against the blasphemous Usurpers of Lookshy. If it is instead failure, then I shall have myself a new coterie of servants in your stead. So say I. So speaks the Mask of Winters."

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

The Carnifex's black eyes lock with those of the Mask of Winters, thoughts surging through his head at tremendous speeds, conclusions clicking into place in an instant. "Surely a Hekatonkires is a beast beyond our measure. We would need time to train ourselves, make ourselves more powerful to face such a superb weapon." The hungry look in his eyes that seems to manifest is likely only obvious to Mulberry and the Mask himself. "...And perhaps a blessing by our dread master, in the form of some of the wonders that he displays outside our humble home. Or even perhaps other things of such exquisite craftsmanship."

[GryffonDurime]

Mulberry does not kneel, never kneels--when the others do, she flickers into the shadows and emerges, her Couture transformed into a dress of thick silk that seems to drip like black ink. It undulates and ripples as she moves forward.

"My mate is right, lord," Mulberry says as she approaches, keeping herself at the back of their number in a calculated show of deference to the Abyssals. "A Hekatonkhire is beyond our abilities. Let us have no illusions about it. Those among our number skilled in fighting are more apt for fighting great numbers than a single foe of strength."

[The Demented One]

The Mask of Winters does not touch Mulberry–to know the touch of a Deathlord is to know Oblivion itself; or so he claims. Instead, he simply acknowledges her protest with a gracious hand, answering her as he would a small child.

"Be without fear, my thrall, for it is with fear that the mortal mind is fettered. My largesse will reward you, my most faithful servants, with what armies or treasures you request. Have you need of my armies of darkness, or my puissant weaponry, I shall oblige you. And do not expect that I would lay obligation upon you without means to fulfill it. I have acquired for you a guide, one well familiar with fallen Denandsor, one who knows enough of its buried forgotten treasures to guide you to those arms most favorable for victory. All will be well."

[GryffonDurime]

Mulberry shrugs.

"Darkness fighting darkness. Death against the imperishable soul. If you intend to task us with it despite my protests, then clearly it is--somehow--within our capabilities. Arm me as you see fit," she adds with a swift gesture, a bit of flippance with her hand.

[The Demented One]

The Mask of Winters seems unhappy with Bloodied Mulberry's demeanor, and his empty sockets press down on her eyes with the full weight of centuries. A inky umbral blot wells up in one of his hands, an undulating mass of Abyssal essence. He flings it at Mulberry, and it clings to her arms, wrapping around them flowing up to cover her forearms. As she struggles and tries to pull away, the shadows peel off, revealing a pair of moonsilver vambraces that gird her arms. Each one bristles with fine spikes of screaming soulsteel, and set in their wrists is a small gem of crystalline Wyld.

"Bloodied Mulberry, remember always that you are my servant. You have proven loyal and worthy, and so it is that I, the Mask of Winters, reward you with these puissant arms. And yet do not think that it is a servant's place to balk their master's orders, or to bear them with any less than the fullness of their strength. Serve me well, and you will be heaped with treasures. Serve me poorly, and your souls will be forged into them. I speak no more on this matter."

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

"If our master would be so kind, I would ask for as many Gears he is willing to provide me. My current assistants are surely a boon to me, but an army they are not. And forgive my boldness in asking, but I would make the same request for any war machines and raw material you are so willing to provide." He waves his hand somewhat. "I care not for their state of repair. Such a task is child's play to me." He wipes a bit more gore off his face and coughs again, "And perhaps a certain set of tools! One I have seen adorning the belt of a colleague of mine." He asks for much, it's clear his modesty and fear of the Deathlord before him either do not exist, or do not surpass his craft-lust.

[The Demented One]

The Mask has never been all too comfortable with Carnifex's grotesque sciences. Even a necromancer-king such as he, even one who has consorted with the Neverborn and drank deep of their titanic essence is unnerved by the vicious enthusiasm of his servants. He had not expected the Deathknights would be so depraved. But Carnifex is a loyal servant, and loyal servants are rewarded.

"Loyal Carnifex, you ask beyond your means. I cannot entrust my own war machines to your hands, cannot take them from Thorns. A Great War is coming, and my arsenal must defend all the Underworld. Nor can I appropriate your colleague's tools from him–and better it would be that you keep no thoughts of rivalry with the Seven-Degreed Physician. But you ask for an army, and an army there is to you. Behold!"

The Deathlord throws wide his cloak, revealing only more darkness, a black maelstrom of essence. And out from the cosmic blackness steps a zombie, forged in heavy steel armor and armed in hand with spear and sword. It steps down from the Mask's dais, and kneels before Carnifex. And then another, and another, and another. Soon there are too many zombies to fit within the fortress, and they march outside in an orderly parade. All told, there are some one hundred zombies, bringing Carnifex's personal command to a complete wing.

[AmberVael]

Sable stands gracefully at her lord's order, and holds her hands before her.
"If I may, it has become apparent to me that while my skill in weaponry is adequate, the limitations of my strength prevent me from wielding a sword; but in taking up alternate weaponry, I have also found that its power is inadequate against our enemies.

"To think to go up against a hekatonkires with a weapon that cannot pierce the flesh of something far less would be foolish, and I do not wish to be proven a fool. Though I am not a warrior as others are, it would still be prudent to be better armed against any enemy that may present themselves to me."

[WhiteKnight777]

Grim

Grim fidgets uncomfortably. Peeling back the soulsteel patch, he looks up at his lord with his unnerving gaze, saying nothing for a long while. At last, he speaks.

"The servant kneels before the master. A single dark flame that burns in the void. Nothing surrounds, nothing creeps, nothing touches, nothing seeps. All are one and one are all in the void. Nothing comes, whether by the hand of the servant or another. The servant begs nothing, save to continue serving. The servant would merely see an end. An end in silence. An end to whispers."

Suddenly, the normally manic Grim droops, his face slack, his posture that of a flower, dead and wilting under the heat of an oppressive sun.

[The Demented One]

"Most prudent an assessment, my minion. Let it not be said that I, the Mask of Winters, would not arm my servants as is called for. Let your own weapon know baptism in the fonts of Oblivion!"

He points menacingly at Sable's own pyre-flame wand, loosing a bolt of crypt-born magic upon it. Beneath the Mask of Winters' necromantic puissance, a black sheen envelops it, the unhallowed dark gleaming of Oblivion's Panoply. It is a weapon reforged in Sable's hands, mighty beyond compare. More troubling, though, is Grim. The Mask looks him over, uncertain what is to be done with the Moonshadow.

"My child, some rewards are beyond even your utmost loyalty. Only Oblivion can bring what you speak of. Know that when your final burden is lifted, when Creation crumbles and falls into the void, you shall finally know your desired surcease."

[WhiteKnight777]

Grim

Grim looks up and gives a sudden manic grin, both eyes gleaming with unwholesome light, though from two very different sources. "Of course, my Lord, of course... An Oblivion. An end to this and that and the other, to in and out and beyond, above and below and side to side... but an end to all, even then? No... There's so much more, beyond the beyond the beyond. Down the rabbit's burrow and beneath the twisting path. The music never ends, my lord... it plays on and on and on, twisting in and out where only the mad can hear. But if only the mad hear the truth, does madness become sanity and the sane become the mad? But only a madman would ask such a question. So the servant supposes not."

His grin widen and he does a full backflip, landing once more in a kneeling crouch with a sickening crack as his spine appears to be doing something unwholesome. "Since the dancer dances on, the servant begs the master shape the tool to his purposes. My will is thine, for thy will is the triumph of oblivion, I know, my Master." the mad fool says as he continues to look with unmitigated faith at Mask of Winters.

[Naquadah]

Kohl knelt at the master's feet, closer in some ways than the rest. He inhaled the bouquet of soulsteel and blood, corpus and iron, and beneath it all the undertones of final and inescapable nothingness.

"I have walked among the warriors of my old home. I have worn their faces and their clothes. I spoke with their vernacular and saluted with their ciphers. And for it all, my lord? I have lists," his eyes gleam. "Lists of the strength of their legions. Lists of their officers' names and capabilities. Lists of their future deployments; what officers, what units, and what destinations. Lists of supplies, both mundane and magical, and their state of repairs. And I have seen, master. How the great lords of the legions spend their days. Where they train and how and when. How they array themselves, and how they influence their city. The petty squabbles between the lords; for all their might, they are still but Dragon-Blooded, still things of politics and posturing. When their ships arrive and depart, and what they carry. When merchants and metics are permitted to enter the walls,a nd what they bring with them, and when the grain shipments arrive. What warehouses are occupied and which are visited by none, and which are typically empty at what times of the month. Where teh criminals are kept, and how to access their cells. And more, my lord, palces great and terrible, where magic is made and maintained. The numbers and hows and whys. And best of all...a copy of the book by which they all live and die. Knowledge sucked from the marrow of broken spines, my lord. And in its unique flavor, the richness that is the lifeblood of Lookshy." He looks up expectantly, a mad love gleaming in eyes shining cold from alabaster sockets.

He listens to his master's crooning voice, imagines those cold metal hands touching him...and snaps back to reality at the mention of the word "hekatonkhiere." He regards his Circle as they make their requests of the master and have them granted. His brow furrows slightly, and he considers how best to speak.

[The Demented One]

"I am well pleased, servants of Oblivion. With what knowledge you have stolen from Lookshy's cryptic vaults, with what treacherous pacts you have struck with their blind ambassadors, with what dread armies you have begun to amass, I little doubt your progress. And now you shall receive the weapons with which you shall defy Lookshy's armies, a baleful hound to match their accursed Skywolf. Now, behold your guide, bound and broken to my will! One who dwelt within Denandsor in time immemorial, and one who will walk its streets again! Witness as I, the Mask of Winters, summon her immortal soul! Behold, Oadenol!"

He pulls a slender medallion of obsidian from the folds of his robes, and shatters it in one hand. Out from the binding talisman flows wisps of ectoplasmic death-essence, slowly congealing into the silhouette of a woman. She is sad beyond words, beyond life, the path of tears engraved into the soft echo-flesh of her visage. Upon her brows flickers a cobalt shadow, a twisted shape that might once have been an astrological sigil. She holds in hand a loot strung with the shadows of shimmering metal, and a daiklave's hilt, bladeless and disarmed. "Greetings." she says, struggling against her will to choke out the words. The Mask of Winters has left her mind, her memories, her will intact. He has only bound her to obey his every wish–your every wish. He is indeed a master necromancer.

[WhiteKnight777]

Grim

Grim looks at the woman, enraptured by her despair. He draws close, like a moth called to a black flame, reaching out one pale hand to stroke her ephemeral cheek. "Ahh... the haunted smith haunts the halls of winter... Will you hold the hands of the unmakers as we stride into the dark, little shade?"

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

His stare is now fixed on the ghostly silhouette of a woman that stands before them. He stands up, all three of his wretched arms held out and wanting to grasp at her as if she were another experiment to be manhandled and prodded. His gaze is even more hungry and unnerving than usual. "You are certainly something special, aren't you? Yeees. A legend's shadow, manifest before us..." He laughs hardily, his cackles nothing more than chilling. Even when he is mirthful, his laughter is not. "My master! Were I knowledgeable of this woman's arrival I'd have held my tongue for any requests! Know well that I will be a master artisan in crafting a perfect Oblivion for Lookshy, my master."

[AmberVael]

Sable

Sable seems to have no more to say, taking her weapon back gratefully and giving some attention to this ghost. She finds no need to praise someone who already knows her opinion of him, and would rather seem silent and watchful than sycophantic and endlessly talkative. Words are only useful when they are needed, after all.

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

The Carnifex continues to chuckle darkly at the new guest in their humble shadowland and returns his gaze to the Deathlord that sit as a scar on the face of the visual spectrum. "I thank you, surely. If you nothing else to give then I must be on with my work. If Lookshy is to fall, it will not be by means of praising-" The Carnifex catches himself in a position where being murdered and his soul being thrown into Oblivion once and for all, and so a correction is in order, "-For such things are best left once our dark majesty can claim our victory! Lookshy will surely be his greatest conquest, and us his dutiful... servants..." His words are not touched by respect, and only later are they laced with fear. The Carnifex is truly disturbing among the disturbed.