Anarion

Princess-Champions of Hyperborea

This was, this was okay. It was exciting! Kathelia's glasses were steaming up again and her attention was all over the place, and keep it together, this is just like...like a bunch of other times in your life and... okay no she's not keeping it together. She has to...has to...ugh you know what, forget it! She grabs Kyouko in a hug because she is on top of her and she can't really see anything else anyway and...and her body is just working that way, just let her have this moment for one second, okay!

In a moment, Kazelia Swiftlance will start to think about a lot of things. About what to expect from Eska. How to escape the laser trap pit (which probably has an extremely neat pattern in its timing that she can figure out), and how to start thinking about this curse that Eupheria has cast and the metaphysical dimensions of the space they're in. Because she's getting really tired of running this maze and tired of being cursed while she's doing it, and Eupheria has left them alone, which means it is time to start thinking about how to cheat at a rigged game.

In a moment, she'll think about all of those things. She might dodge some lasers too, or spar with Eska, or tell Eska to get it together and partner up to await her sudden yet inevitable betrayal.

In a moment! Right now, she's hugging a fox cheerleader on top of her who's pressing down on the straps of her overalls in a way that makes it way too hard to think about anything else, so she's just going to enjoy that fuzzy fur and pressed uniform and the scent of Kyouko's body mixed with her perfume. Then! Then she'll think about things.

Monster Hearts: Sleepshy Rise

I'm looking for a Samael post here. If Elanorin wants to have him sit, then I think we can wrap up the scene. If she wants the confrontation now, I'm also game for that and will adjust my night plans accordingly either way.

Princess-Champions of Hyperborea

Kathelia vaguely remembered visiting a world where sports were really popular. It would be have several back now, more than five maybe? Oberon had taken a very personal hand in that one, he seemed to quite enjoy winning trophies, even if they were meaningless to him once he had them (except of course if anyone else tried to touch them, in which case his full wrath would be on display). But not to fall too deep into the sad memories, that world had held up its great athletes as its heroes and they had used magic to project the matches to huge crowds in stadiums, bazaars, marketplaces, and palaces.

Kathelia had um...(no no, in the memories she was still Kazelia, she could think of herself from back then without her internal voice articulating the lisp, mostly)...she had been enamored of one of the sports there, a kind of flying javelin toss fake combat thing called "Lighting Strike!" The participants wore winged shoes and used special golden energy rings to catch and hurl the javelins. If you hit another participant without them catching it, you'd score (and there'd be a big lightning effect on the person's uniform), and if you bypassed them all and hit their goal with a javelin, you'd get something like a ten times score accompanied by thunder and lighting while everyone reset positions.

What was coming back to her now, though, weren't really the games themselves though. It was the promotional material! Back there, the games had been promoted with all sorts of ridiculous claims on posters and by people announcing them around the marketplaces. "See Juniko, the Unstoppable Arrow!" "Watch Anika the Unbreakable crush her opposition!" "Live today it's Esmeralda Thunderbolt, she's promised to win the match without touching the ground even once!" It's those kind of claims that Kathelia is thinking about as she watches Alina vault around the arena.

Sure, she's there, she's trying to get the ball when it gets near her, but she's a little afraid of it too, she doesn't want her glasses to get damaged or for it to hit her in the face. Besides, the nearest it got was when Alina brushed by her with that smile and more than anything else, that made her blush and fangirl out a little. She wanted to shout "Voids, this is just like the time Esmeralda Thunderbolt recovered from being poisoned by the coach of her arch-rival team, the Avalanches, and then she made a show out of personally taking down each player with a javelin catch reversal at close range before taking it in for a score!" (yes, she wanted to shout all of that, she could speak very quickly despite the lisp). There wasn't time though because Alina was already gone and one of the hoops had been stilled with the most delicate back flip double somersault dunk (around Eska!) Kathelia had ever seen! She was in awe and she was almost certainly going to ask Alina for an autograph after this if circumstances permitted it. Squeee!

[My grace roll was a 6, by the by]

Princess-Champions of Hyperborea

Oh dear, the loser tent had a lot less cake, and a lot more awkward mockery of curses that Eupheria herself had put down. Kathelia bet that Dandy was actually a really good dancer and could even make that odd sunflower dance look nice if she didn't also look at a horse. This was just mean.

"Say Sally sells seashells by the sea shore without making a mistake.” Oh, well, that was easy.

"Thally thellth theashellths by the thea sthore"

EEEEEENNNNZZZZ Eupheria blares a loud air horn that echos out across the stage. "Incorrect. Please try again, and this time, do try and enunciate!"

"Sthally s-s-s-thellsssth s-s-theashellths by the sssthea shhhore"

BBBBBBBZZZZZZZT this time a loud buzzer goes off blaring from everywhere on the stage at once, making Kathelia wince. "Incorrect! No stuttering please!"

"S...Sthally s-ell-s s...ea..sh...ells"

BRRRRRRTT Eupheria blows one of those party noisemaker things, which extends out into a mimicry of a snake but still makes the raspberry sound instead of hissing. "Too slow, you'll just have to do better."

Suffice to say that over several more attempts, Kathelia does not do better. Her braces and her teeth and tongue just aren't working right at the moment, and the curse won't let her overcome that (and sure she could blow some magic on trying to hold back the curse, but seriously, it's not worth that kind of firepower right now). So instead, she just gets purpler and purpler, and eventually she's up there hyperventilating and just not able to do it.

"Well, nice try sweetie pie. Better luck next time!" And at that point a giant cane comes out of nowhere and pulls Kathelia off the stage.

Monster Hearts: Sleepshy Rise

CREEP
WHIPPED
TRUANT

And there goes Elodie. Timothy, being useless as ever (well, not entirely true, Elodie clearly cared, but he wasn't moving which was the critical action right now). Annalee has already edged nearer to him and away from Samael. A lot is racing through her head. The way he treated her, used her. The way he made her look like his tool, embarrassed her. She wasn't his to use that way. She wasn't any man's to use that way and her Baba had taught her better than that. It was mortifying, and worse it was a failure on her part. Well, no more.

Annalee grabs Timothy by the hand, not so much as a word, and pulls him out of the room. Samael had forced her to bring him, but he hadn't said a word about keeping him and she'd had plenty of time to adjust her bracelets and charms, so just let him try that foolish hypnosis of his again.

She stops at the door though and looks at Samael. It's a look that says I know what you did. Is he going to get his butt out of his chair for once and do anything about this? She highly doubts it.

Princess-Champions of Hyperborea

Kathelia had a pretty good plan. Everyone said the knight was useless, but if you ran two knights and one princess, your knights could serve as a sort of cover. Follow around the key scorers on the other teams and immediately fight them and take away the treasure they stole, then your princess could use the protection of your knight as an escort. Nothing stopped the second knight from playing defense during that time, and they could switch off. It was like, maybe 1.5 queens instead of two, but with the bonus of a safe escort for a single princess into a kingdom. A slow, careful, meticulous strategy. It would have worked absolutely perfectly, too, if Adila had played normally!

But nooooooo. Some dragon had to be a total party pooper and ruin it for everyone. With just one princess on her team (Dandy, obviously) and basically a billion knights running around, the game ground to a complete halt. No treasure was ever changing hands and it looked like the crowd of sprites, spriggans, and assorted animated objects was going to start booing and throwing things at having their entertainment ruined. And then fluffy poochy Adila had to go and make an offer to Alina to break the tie.

Kathelia pouted, but she couldn't really be that mad. Alina deserved a win, and Kathelia was still riding high on the cake and battle chess, so she figured her team could endure a little bit in the loser's box too. But her strategy had totally been good and she wouldn't let anybody tell her otherwise!

[3+5+2=10. Good, but not quite as good as Adila.]

Princess-Champions of Hyperborea

Kathelia tries to look cool. When the last Queen goes down, she tries to lower her head and push her glasses up so the light reflects off them just so and she gets that perfect chessmaster look. But, seriously, she can't hold it, she's so giddy. Her little Pegasus-clad butt bounces in her seat, and before she can help herself she's pulling in her elbows and lifting her arms up to cover face and jiggling her legs as she giggles and just...just being giddy all over. She won! She won!

A-and, Kyouko is cheering and waving pom-poms and l-looking right at her aaaaaaaaah! She pulls into herself and shrinks to cover her face entirely with her hands and before you know it, she's in the winner's tent, what?! She tentatively uncovers one eye, then the other, and there's cake in front of her. And oooh, it's that chocolate with a little layer of raspberry jam cake that is just so decadent and delicious. This is extremely exciting, although maybe not as exciting as winning and having Kyouko cheering for her. She starts to blush again and hurriedly hides it by taking a bite of the cake. Heavenly.

Okay, okay, safely amped up on sugar and succes, Kathelia has the option to take stock. In some ways, she's a little disappointed. They all moved into a tent, but she can't see the former battleground or get a sense of the overall maze. She was hoping that Eupheria would escalate the stakes by moving them closer and closer to the center. It just made sense to her that as the games got bigger and closer to the finals, they'd progressively move somewhere more important and draw a larger crowd until eventually they got to center court, or whatever it was called here. That's just...that's how these things were supposed to work. She couldn't tell for sure though. If they weren't gaining ground from this, she'd need to rethink her strategy, maybe use the next game as a way to try and get under Eupheria's skin instead of focusing on winning.

One thing that was good though, Dandy looked a little more together. Smug, sure, but committed and back into saving them too. "Dandy..." Kathelia said, walking over to her with her plate of cake. "You were thuper good out there. Like, theriously awethome!" She gives her a braces-filled grin. "I know today hath been like, inthanely weird but...we're gonna get through thith. Together." She turns, looks at Isolde. "You too, King Itholde, right? We haven't really had the chanthe to talk, but I really look up to your daughter, sthe's one of my betht frienth."

[I'd like to use the time in the tent to take a relatively safe speak softly with Dandy and Isolde. 5+1+1=7.
To Dandy: what can she tell us based on her experience about how to get through to Eupheria?
To Isolde: What does Isolde want and how can I help her get it?
To Isolde: What can she tell us about Eupheria and her motivations?]

Monster Hearts: Sleepshy Rise

CREEP
WHIPPED
TRUANT

Annalee looks at Timothy, and at Samael. Her head is starting to clear, and she sees the way that Timothy is looking at her. Anger. Hurt. He was so easy to hurt, it hardly mattered, right? But she hadn't wanted to do that. She hadn't wanted to bring him here at all, had she? It was confusing. And now Samael was tormenting Elodie, looking at her with those eyes. What had she done? She...needed to think. She needed to get out of here. This wasn't who she wanted to be. Wasn't what she wanted to do. She was a witch! A master and lord of monstrous dealings. Not a slave. Not a servant! Timmy was right to be disappointed. She owed him better than that.

Samael, you're not looking at her right now, you're focused on Elodie, but you can feel the difference as Annalee stands up on her own feet and walks away from you, over to where Timmy is standing. Though we'll certainly hear from Elodie first before anyone else can move further than that.

[string acted upon, XP marked.]

Princess-Champions of Hyperborea

Kathelia's team probably had the easiest time working together in battle chess. Isolde and Dandy weren't trying to disagree with her strategy, and they all wanted the same outcome of Eupheria's games, so it made sense to work together. Since Kathelia knew that there was randomness added by Eupheria and that each of the other teams had one of her sisters, she expected them to fight a lot, and to fall back on their strengths. That made things easy because they were predictable. Eska would settle on a bishop early to strike across the board, Azora would use her princess aggressively. Kathelia didn't like the idea of fighting Alina or Adila (or other Adila, she wasn't really sure about that one), but she had Dandy stay in reserve for when fluffy Adila showed up because that was a good matchup. There was also something to using a horse as a knight that did actually have the right feel, though she didn't push Dandy too hard on that front. Isolde would be a good match for Alina, especially on a smaller piece if they could defend a simple pawn when Alina came out so none of her lights would be in play.

Really, with both of Kathelia's teammates, it was mainly a question of motivation, rather than strategy. Isolde was obviously depressed and Dandy seemed like she was dealing with some things (in fairness to her, it seemed like what fluffy Adila had said had really been a big deal) so Kathelia had to do a lot of work to get them to pay attention and give the game their focus. A lot of "we're the team thatth betht pothithioned to wisth everyone elth out of here!" and some pats and hugs.

But at the end of the day, it was a simple strategy that was best here. Play to their strengths, look for good matchups. In a complex game with many sides and lots of randomness, simple was often the best strategy. This wasn't a pair of expert chess masters trying to out-think and out-gambit one another, it was a scattered group of teams who probably weren't going to agree and would fall back on their own first order strategies. Kathelia was ready!

[Sense with Despair: 5, 5, 5, +0=10]

Monster Hearts: Sleepshy Rise

Not planning to go for the shut down there, Amish? Just Timmy's silent (and currently entirely unnoticed) disapproval?