Ellri

The Insidious Night

Lovely to hear, hank.

You're much nicer as a GM than we are... We tend to almost tear CSs apart at times... (but then, your world is easier to deal with)

Stargate - H.M.S Tempest

Agreed. VI makes most sense.
It could be a research project into developing a reliable and trustworthy AI. After all, no Tau'ri will exactly trust a replicator AI, even if it has no nanite body. (hint hint, you scientist types)

The Insidious Night

Name: Thoraniel Nee-Theranaziel Tormodsdóttir
Gender: female
Age: 37, looks mid to late teens
Race: Mostly elf of the forest, but she has about a third of her ancestry in among the men of the fields. (approximately 2/3rds elven)

Appearance: Compared to women of the fields, she is a beauty, having many of the softer traits of elvenkind. Alas, she lacks their height and is of slightly heavier build. To elves, she looks far too much like the men of the fields.

She stands about 163 cm tall, has dirty-blonde hair and half-pointed ears. Her eyes are a pale blue. As mentioned, Thoraniel is bulkier than most elves. At such a young age as she is, she is treated as much younger than she truly is, mostly due to her mixed blood, which gives her a lifespan closer to that of elves.

History

Her history is not a nice subject. She is a bastard child of bastards. Due to her thoroughly mixed ancestry, she is an outcast among her kind. She has had to live at the edges of two societies, truly belonging to neither. All her life, she has been used. Her elven kin wanted nothing to do with her. When she was old enough to be weaned, she was sent to her father, to be raised by him. He was an innkeeper, proprietor of a somewhat seedy inn. To say he appreciated getting another mouth to feed would be a lie. Especially considering that he was married. His wife did not exactly appreciate having to raise the proof of his infidelity. Still, she was raised. She received food. Poor food compared to what her half-siblings got, but it was food. As soon as she was old enough to work, she was put to work as a serving girl in the inn. It was hard work, for her siblings all bossed over her. No matter what she did, it was not good enough. There was always something she should’ve done better. Mockery, belittling and such was a natural part of her life.

There had over the centuries been some interbreeding between the men of the fields and the elves of the forest, but it had never been seen as positive by anyone. Such individuals were typically scorned, outcast. The more elven blood someone had while living among the men of the fields, the lesser his/her status. When she was sixteen and just entering her puberty, her step-mother found a new use for her. She started to sell her to her customers. being as small as she was, Thoraniel had no chance to say anything about the matter. In time, she grew a rather jaded view towards it. There was nothing else she could do about it after all.

As the years passed, her abuse continued. If she ever got pregnant, it did not last long. As she grew older, she slowly matured, gaining weight and strength. It was clear enough that she would not reach the height of her elven kin, but it was also clear that she had inherited the natural strength of their kind. Combined with some of the bulkier build of the men of the fields, this meant she eventually grew quite strong. After she killed one of her “clients” for abusing her, her family started tying her down before selling her.

When she was thirty-something and her father and stepmother were getting older, she had a chance encounter with the man who called himself Thaddeus. He encouraged her to strike out on her own, to leave the miserable life she had behind. She thought long on his advice, then decided to do it.

Over many a night, she worked the latches on her door with a purloined knife, eventually managing to break through them, the stout wooden bar blocking the door from the outside dropping to the floor with a dull thud. She made her way, first to her father’s room, then to that of her half-siblings. None had been woken by the falling bar, and with her knife through their hearts, neither did her family ever again. Alas, one of her half-brothers was away, so she could not pay him back for decades of pain, both physical and mental.

In addition to a good, sheathed knife, she took what coin she could, a simple longbow, some food and a stout cloak, and left her childhood home behind. Since then, she has wandered the land, staying far away from her home and other civilized places, due to there being a lofty prize on her head. At first, she struggled to survive, but in time she started becoming good at it.

Over the years in the wilds, she often camped in with various brigands, though she left many of them after unfortunate discussions ending with someone dead at her knife. Some of them taught her how to survive, including how to fire a bow and arrow. Sometime recently, she found an elf willing to teach her how to make a bow suited for her build. As yet, she has not mastered it. She joined Thaddeus’ mission after another chance encounter, having nothing better to do.

Personality

Thoraniel is fairly jaded. After decades of torture-like treatment, she has an unusually high threshold for pain. She has never been one for speaking much, but she does believe in fair punishment. Murder is something she has no qualms against.
Owing to more than a decade of being raped on a regular basis, she hates anyone belittling women, having a rather lacking belief in the fact that most men can be anything other than horny beasts.

More than any of that, she is a survivor. She’s been through hell (not literally) many times over and has come out stronger for it. Ever since escaping from her home, she has not been afraid to speak her mind. Anyone disagreeing too hard with that, has tended to find a knife either at their throat, or through their heart if unlucky.

However, if someone does not behave like a horny beast, she treats them with respect. She shows more respect towards women, though, giving them better benefit of the doubt.

Skills

She’s decent with a knife and other skills requiring brute strength. A rudimentary archer and tracker, but no master. If she has any magical aptitude she does not know of it, so that is irrelevant. Her patience, possibly inherited from eleven ancestors, has allowed her to become a decent hunter. She believes most arguments can be settled with a knife, and as no one yet has argued after her knife got stuck in their chest, she has no reason to change that belief. She’s an expert at holding grudges, a skill clearly inherited from her eleven kin. An insult is always paid back, even if it takes decades.

Thoraniel is also decent at good old highway robbery.

Possessions

Worn clothes. Somewhat mismatched and ill-fitting.
Hooded, water-proof cloak, possibly of elven make.
An ill-fitting boiled leather jerkin.
A good, long knife of dwarven make.
A heavy horn-and-wood bow made to her build.
Quiver of arrows, sized to the bow.
A pouch of various coins, hanging from a string around her neck.
A necklace holding the dried right ears of her slain family.
A pack with a simple bedroll and some traveling fare and survival gear.

Miscellaneous:
None yet.

New Reply button is too big

its 10-20 pixels wider, 1-5 pixels taller here. We'd guesstimate at least. No major problem.
Ubuntu-based Firefox.

Stargate - H.M.S Tempest

we discussed that bit with Forsythe, Sep. Decided they were late to the bridge, and that it only made sense to have it end at that point, so that they too could get involved. Had this been advanced, we'd have had them brought into the collab at that point instead.

The ship computer is not an AI per se. (At least that was our idea) That'd not be trusted by anyone with human-form replicator experience. But of course, the British don't have such experience, and the computer isn't a nanite composition (we think), so who knows?

The Insidious Night [Low Fantasy]

intriguing.

Stargate - H.M.S Tempest

The next Collab should involve both the Navigation officer and the Weapons officer, but it need not involve all or just those.

or you could write a short post just from the perspective of the Weapons officer. We'll be around for a while longer, so if you want a collab with Astridh, that can be arranged.

Stargate - H.M.S Tempest

its now in IC post 14. The next step has to go in another collab.

Link from OoC to Last page IC & Link from IC to OoC last page.

Or both, if there's some nice small button for each and convenient to code? Mind you, latest unread is the most important one.

PM Number Not Showing Up?

That is actually a feature, not a bug. Mahz has slowed down update on PM counters because they overloaded the server when they updated instantly. (the number of PMs used combined with that rate of update caused the server to DDoS.) Until he has further optimized code, it will probably stay like that.