Corsair

Refuge of the Forgotten

"More useful than archery." She shrugged. "Have fun. I know I will." She turned her attention to Johnny. "Robbery's not all that difficult, gets us the funds immediately, and it's useful practice for the kids here who don't know how to hurt someone. But if you're offering the family funds for the war chest, have at it." She said, although she looked a little put out. "Shame, though. I had good times robbing banks with my Mom back in the day."

Refuge of the Forgotten

"I really could give less of a damn if I've hurt his or his mother's feelings." Victoria said dryly. "I already count all the Olympians as my enemies by sheer virtue of my parentage, the Aesir and Vanir by my allegiances, and nearly every other deity by my beliefs." She smiled as she walked away. "But if money is a concern...well, funny enough. The people of this world have a habit of keeping their funds in poorly defended brick and mortar boxes. Although we might need a little bit more than I can get out of a teller."

She raised her voice. "Alright, who's up for boosting an armored car?"

Refuge of the Forgotten

"If I run out of rifle rounds I have my sidearm. If my sidearm runs out of ammo, I have my knife." She unsheathed her kukri and flicked it over in her hands, catching it by the tip, then flicked it over back to the grip and sheathed it. "I don't discount the merits of learning how to handle hand to hand weaponry. But bows? Bullets are cheaper, lighter, smaller, easier to make, easier to carry, easier to conceal, easier to use, and vastly more effective than arrows.

"But perhaps a situation will come where I am forced to resort to a bow taken off a dead warrior. Perhaps a situation will come in which I am forced to fight using only a Groucho Marx mask and a rubber chicken. The first rule of an army - you train how you fight. If you train us to fight with bows you are expecting us to fight with bows. That will not win us this war."

She started pacing, her arms crossed. "You want to win this war? Because if you want to fight this war on the same footing as the Gods you will lose, this refuge will be destroyed, and everyone in it will die. You face a foe with superior numbers and superior powers. Do you think to win through the power of sheer willpower? Because we are in the right? That isn't the world we live in."

Victoria paused a moment. "You want to win this war? Learn from the examples of those who fought giants and won. Look at David, who bested a man thrice his size, armed and armored to the teeth. And how? Because David did not fight the battle Goliath wanted. He forced Goliath to fight his battle, and because of it Goliath took a stone to the face, and a sword through the neck. We cannot base our strategies, our tactics on our enemy, because our enemy is the master of those tactics. Learn from modern armies, marching into wars against small, flexible groups, and no matter their military success they simply cannot win. We can use those same tactics."

"The enemy comes to us. And because of that we have an advantage. We can choose the battlefield, and choose how the battle is fought. But this? This will avail us nothing. For a few thousand dollars we could have a Kalashnikov for every person in this refuge, and for only a little more tens of thousands of rounds, enough to start our own apocalypse. It will take these children months to be battlefield proficient with even the most basic shortbow. Give me a week and a box of rifles and I can turn every one of them into a sharpshooter."

Refuge of the Forgotten

Victoria slung her rifle. "It's a family weapon. My mother's father took it off a dead Arab during the War of Independence." She glanced over at him. "That's the Israeli War of Independence, if you were curious." She drew her Colt and stepped up to another target. "We face the Old Ways. If Ares comes down here we have no hope of besting him or his spawn with swords." She took a shot, putting neatly into the bullseye. "If we want to survive this war, if we want to win, if we want to be free of the Gods..." She took another shot. "We have to embrace the new ways. New weapons, new tactics, new ideas."

Refuge of the Forgotten

Victoria watched the little speech with barely concealed disgust. To be fair, that was how most people regarded her around here - they liked their little renegade Gods who coddled them and made them into their own tools in the divine struggle for power. These people seemed to miss that for the most part their renegade Gods were no better than the rest. Nearly all of them were liars, tricksters, deceivers. Not as vile as Zeus, perhaps, but there were few who were. She stepped up to a target a short ways down from the other shooters.

The other problem was the bows. Bows were great weapons if you were, say, a Scythian. Maybe if you were hunting buffalo across the plains of precolonial America, or building an Empire from the steppes. There were two crucial problems - they weren't Mongols, and this was the twenty-first century.

Rather than raise a bow she unslung her Mosin-Nagant from her shoulder and raised it to her shoulder, taking a half-second to line herself up and still her breathing, then let loose with a rapid-fire barrage, her hand moving in a blur as she cycled the bolt and pulled the trigger. The British had called it the Mad Minute, and she was the equal of any Tommy - and she had a better rifle to boot. Every five shots she slid a hand to her belt and pulled a stripper clip, slotting into the rifle, and then she was plugging away again. Boom, click, boom, click, boom, click.

Thirty-six shots. Sixty seconds. Perfect accuracy.

"Bullshit religion and ancient weapons are no match for a good rifle, kids."

Refuge of the Forgotten

A Modern Prometheus

Name: Victoria Gottjaeger
Age: 19
Gender: Female
Godly parent: Prometheus
Brief description of godly parent: Prometheus is Humanity's protector from the capriciousness of the Gods. At the dawn of the Human race Prometheus deceived Zeus into accepting sacrifices of the inedible, unwanted parts of the meat, and when Zeus attempted to take revenge by stealing light and warmth from Humanity Prometheus stole the Divine Flame from Olympus and gifted it to Humanity, along with the knowledge needed to use it to raise themselves from the muck and filth of their existence into something greater.

For that act Prometheus was punished, chained to a rock, and every day for millennia an eagle would rip through his belly and devour his liver, only for his wounds to heal in time for the eagle's return. This would come to an end during the Labors of Heracles, the great hero rescuing Humanity's shackled guardian. Since that time little has been heard of Prometheus, though rumor says he walks among Humanity still, seeking a way to overthrow the reign of Gods and truly free Humanity.
Appearance:

Picture

Skills/Powers/Weapons: Victoria lacks any supernatural abilities, the only truly abnormal thing about her being her unusually quick grasp of skills, technology, and scientific concepts. She is, however, highly physically fit and very skilled with firearms and in hand to hand combat. She makes most common use of weighted knuckle gloves, a Nepalese Kukri, a highly modified Colt M1911 sidearm, and a Mosin-Nagant M/28-30.
Strengths/Weaknesses: Victoria is a highly-trained, fit, and well-equipped soldier, the equal of any mortal commando.
Victoria has a personal vendetta against all Gods with the exception of her father and Heracles, something she doesn't make any effort to hide. She has made it clear that her heart's desire is to see a world where Gods are a thing of the past, their power over Humanity forever broken. It doesn't make her terribly popular in a lot of circles. Her place in the refuge is more due to her hating Zeus more than any other God, plus the already meager power most of the Refuge Gods have over Humanity deflects her ire. That said, she still has a habit of proseltyzing to other Demigods that their parents are tyrants by their very nature.

Refuge of the Forgotten

<Snipped quote by Mictlan93>

Hinduism is literally the third largest religion in the modern world, of which Shiva is one of the main deities.

@Dead Cruiser

Think that was Mictlan's point, that Shiva might be too significant a deity to fit into this group.

Refuge of the Forgotten

A Modern Prometheus

Name: Victoria Gottjaeger
Age: 19
Gender: Female
Godly parent: Prometheus
Brief description of godly parent: Prometheus is Humanity's protector from the capriciousness of the Gods. At the dawn of the Human race Prometheus deceived Zeus into accepting sacrifices of the inedible, unwanted parts of the meat, and when Zeus attempted to take revenge by stealing light and warmth from Humanity Prometheus stole the Divine Flame from Olympus and gifted it to Humanity, along with the knowledge needed to use it to raise themselves from the muck and filth of their existence into something greater.

For that act Prometheus was punished, chained to a rock, and every day for millennia an eagle would rip through his belly and devour his liver, only for his wounds to heal in time for the eagle's return. This would come to an end during the Labors of Heracles, the great hero rescuing Humanity's shackled guardian. Since that time little has been heard of Prometheus, though rumor says he walks among Humanity still, seeking a way to overthrow the reign of Gods and truly free Humanity.
Appearance:

Picture

Skills/Powers/Weapons: Victoria lacks any supernatural abilities, the only truly abnormal thing about her being her unusually quick grasp of skills, technology, and scientific concepts. She is, however, highly physically fit and very skilled with firearms and in hand to hand combat. She makes most common use of weighted knuckle gloves, a Nepalese Kukri, a highly modified Colt M1911 sidearm, and a Mosin-Nagant M/28-30.
Strengths/Weaknesses: Victoria is a highly-trained, fit, and well-equipped soldier, the equal of any mortal commando.
Victoria has a personal vendetta against all Gods with the exception of her father and Heracles, something she doesn't make any effort to hide. She has made it clear that her heart's desire is to see a world where Gods are a thing of the past, their power over Humanity forever broken. It doesn't make her terribly popular in a lot of circles. Her place in the refuge is more due to her hating Zeus more than any other God, plus the already meager power most of the Refuge Gods have over Humanity deflects her ire. That said, she still has a habit of proseltyzing to other Demigods that their parents are tyrants by their very nature.

Elementals: The Scarred World (Semi-Open)

Mira had been taken by surprise early in the fight, a Drake attacking her and meeting its end with a flurry of cuts from her blade. Unfortunately she had not been swift enough to get out of the way and had been clipped by the falling beast, sending her sprawling to the deck, barely conscious and concussed. Some ally, she wasn't sure who, had hauled her below decks to safety, and now she seemed to be coming out of the worst of it, her dizziness and blinding pain fading away into mere disorientation and an awful headache.

"I did not account for myself very well out there." She mumbled around a tongue that felt like a felt pad about a foot thick. She checked over her injuries surreptitiously - a deep gash in her brow from where her head had impacted deck railing, and her flesh was tender and sore all along her right side, where she'd likely have a lovely bruise for the next week or so. Fantastic.

She slowly, gingerly made her way to where she thought Master Alexander would set up for triage. She wasn't overly concerned about her own condition, but she knew that he'd want to look her over and make sure that there wasn't more severe damage than a bruise and getting her bell rung.

MI-13: Hunters for Crown and Country

Starts in 1937, but later arcs will probably take place after the war proper gets started.