Fetzen

Blades of the Blood Coast

I think we got an engineer in the party, so here's my suggestion: Let's take the key with us, so then upon encountering a more formidable foe, we can combine the five shackles into a chain by interlocking them with each other. Attached to one of the wooden clubs this could serve as a makeshift flail.

Maybe we could also combine them into a bola to throw at and immobilize an animal. If then we encountered some wild horses...

*mumble muble mumble, just imagine some additional useless trash talk here*

Blades of the Blood Coast

And who got the first loot ?

Do iron shackles count as exotic weaponry ?
(just kidding!)

Blades of the Blood Coast

On day one, Lorcan had been full of hope that a journey in a wagon was not the worst thing that could happen to him. He had seen the clouds, the many mounted soldiers with no roof over their heads to protect them from anything. He had also seen the road and that it probably would turn more rough at some point, had thought that they were the lucky ones who did not have to carry their own weight for the next few days.

On day two, Lorcan's neck muscles had started to ache. All the effort of trying not to bang his head against some part of the wagon's ceiling or side walls with every bump on the road had been taking its toll already. Luckily his hair was a big, fuzzy mess that could act as some sort of shock absorber.

Somewhen over the course of day three Lorcan's guts had started to protest against the food that could hardly be called such. Maybe it had been the better decision than to try and fully process it, even if the infrequent breaks had made it difficult to hold things back quite literally.

Had it been day four or five when Fenks had died ? The plus point: There now was more room, less of the nasty smell and the certainty that none of those remaining was infected. On the other hand however it still was one person who had died a painful death and while maybe some of the others didn't care, Lorcan did. And with that kind of revelation the wagon had started to feel just that tiny little bit more dirty.

Also, Lorcan would have preferred the wagon breaking a wheel than one of the horses breaking a leg. He was in no way claustrophobic, but being practically immobilized for days had felt like a very bad thing for the athletic Skayleigh. Getting out of that wagon would have taken away some of his worries, but such a change of things had been nowhere in sight. The foothills had punished his already pretty beaten head just like the mountain roads, but not harder than those either. So there had been no hope for the material breaking down then after so much survival.

And yet, after all that hardship, the way their guards just left them behind still managed to baffle him quite a bit. Weren't those iron shackles worth anything or why did they just leave them and the keys behind ? Maybe a quite tiny oddity to wonder about given his overall situation right now, but still...

The person Faeril passed the keys on to was him and greedily the half-giant rammed the keys in the crude lock. Ironically, now that the clamps had been pressing on his skin for so long, removing them actually hurt as blood was pouring back into layers of flesh that had been in lack of it for days. Lorcan looked down on himself, gently pulling back the sleeves to check whether any kind of infection had formed beneath the iron. Nothing! Maybe the only good thing this day for otherwise their situation could be considered rather bleak.

Having handed the key over to the one standing next to him, Lorcan kneeled to pick up his still warm shackles from the ground again. The thought of keeping those felt odd, but on the other hand it somehow felt satisfying and good for his sense of security to have something in his hand. Maybe that iron could send some sparks flying to start a fire ? Or maybe they could be used to beat a small animal to death for food ? Lorcan did not know, but his grip around his shackles only hardened. If they should prove to be useless ballast he could still throw them away at any time.

"Lorcan. Just Lorcan." It would be easy for anyone to notice that the Skayleigh was speaking with a bit of a weird accent. The Caelic isles were a bit of a region of their own and he could not hide that easily. "I do not have any other name."

Winds of Fate - A Thieves' Adventure (Semi-Tabletop)

Skarsat

It had not taken long for Skarsat to start enjoying the overly abundant plethora of food The Faded Lantern had to offer, although it seemed rather obvious to the Tork man that this offer was much more a special one than what any everyday guest could hope for. How much all of this would have cost if ordered by ordinary people without an assignment as critical as theirs ? Or rather: How much this Lord Vargas secretly subtracted from their reward for all of this ? Skarsat had a hard time imagining that their employer would not have calculated all of this very thoroughly, from what was on the table to the very rooms they had slept in this night.

On the other hand... if he had been nothing more than an ordinary guest this morning, Skarsat might have had it easier to just try and talk his money back out of the innkeeper's pockets, claiming that the overall atmosphere was... unpreferable and inappropriate. Or at least so it felt for him the moment Solange started her verbal siege. A piece of egg was still hanging out of a corner of his mouth as the hulking Tork raised his head, just looking at the woman -- with surprise at first, but quickly with rather obvious unhappyness that could hardly be explained by some residual morning groggyness.

Darling ? Reservation in helping himself ? Skarsat's thoughts could be summarized as follows: 'Erm... what?'. There were no such words in a Tork tribe, and right now he could just hope that there never would, even if his current judgement probably did those kind words great unjustice because it was Solange and her special way of expressing them that bothered him right now.

Since Tork tribes had come into existence they had found many phenomenons on, above and below their heated sands that they had found hard or impossible to explain, so many desert myths had formed over the ages. At some point one had found out that large grooves in the dunes were caused by nothing else than rocks being pushed around by violent gusts of wind, but that discovery had been too late to prevent the creation of a particularly nasty myth: the one of the great snails. Not great because people had liked them, but because they had been said to have been so abormously large that people had feared them.

Just like your ordinary snail, those creatures had allegedly been omnivores that had satisfied their large appetite by use of a radula. Not only had it been claimed that they had been able to cause disaster for a tribe by eating away all of the fruits a much needed oasis had to offer, but they had even been given the ability to attack any unwary wanderer directly. In your sleep they'd come at you at their shameful pace, slide aover your body, suffocate you with their weight while grinding away your skin at the same time.

Solange's words just seemed to do the same thing. That woman was a very good big snail impersonator. Unfortunately deploying any of the countermeasures a tribe would have had to offer against such a hypothetical threat would have caused big trouble for himself. So there was no other choice but to stand fast and bear all of it.

"Have you ever tried bare silence ? Maybe that's the best or second best thing you can give ?" No smile and no grin either. Skarsat's words were pretty dry, but even that already was the result of filtering out the negative emotions he currently had. "And handing me that plate over there certainly is the other thing, right ?" Now he tried to put up a slight smile, but whether it would have success and not come across as a pretty forced thing was to be questioned. He did not want to start an argument with Solange or anyone else right on the first morning, but he felt no need to hide his true feelings all too excessively either.

"A big man needs big food. That large plate, please." and he pointed to a pretty big one filled to the brim with bread, cheese and bacon.

Blades of the Blood Coast

Lorcan

Lorcan

Skayleigh | 43 | Male

Appearance

Lorcan's height can be considered rather average for a Skayleigh, but years of straining work have made his limbs grow thicker and his body more muscular. He's a fair distance away from being all bulked up, but it's easy to notice that he holds a big lot of power.

His skin resembles that of his wood elven cousins, exhibiting a rather tan complexion and a decent lack of impurities. There is some scarring, but it's at places not visible as long as there's your typical set of clothes present. His hair and face are a different matter tough: The former's long and fuzzy and the latter's coarse and appears a little 'flat' given his stubby nose and shallow eye sockets, both more suited to a giant than a wood elf. Staring at you is a set of curious eyes with strikingly green-ish irises, but if you don't want to look at those you can enjoy strips of dark beard covering his jawline and the part above his thin lips.

Personality

Lorcan sits rather high up in terms of optimism and his exile, as ferociously unwanted as it is, has not changed much about that yet. It would not be the first time for him to happily accept a daring risk not really necessary -- not because he'd like to boast or has a secret desire for hazardous situation, but because his estimation of chances is biased and bad experiences get priority in terms of deletion. It's a layer of ostensible dumbness hiding the fact that Lorcan's mind is proper and more than capable of producing ideas that are basically sound.

However, just as his ideas sometimes lack refinement, so do other parts of his behavior: Lazyness is a very nice-to-have feature in life that should be implemented frequently, just as is with eating and drinking. There's a bit of a 'don't care' attitude to him, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't know the concept of loyality in both the positive and the negative sense. Once a certain goal has been set in his mind, he can be very tenacious to achieve it. The same holds true towards those who have managed to tag themselves friend or foe.

Background

• Profession: Entertainer, both the joyful and the more vicious kind of it
• Class: Bard
• Heritage: Son of an ordinary, low-ranking family

History
Lorcan was born in a place close to the eastern tip of the Caelic Isles called Droichead. It is an island whose primary function is to serve as a bridging point for the two adjacent isles which are all close together, but much, much larger than Droichead. Due to its small size, rocky soil and lack of other natural resources the settlement there had only been significant as long as there had been the opportunity to make traders pay customs. This no longer was the case when Lorcan was born, so he was somewhat destined to raise in poverty and an overall rather boring environment.

The young boy tried to make some coin by entertaining people on the streets, using a simple flute and whatever other instrument he could find and learn to play. It worked, but just barely so. One could say that after a few years on the lower end of things the young Skayleigh was an all too easy catch for everyone who could promise something exciting. Lorcan joined a roaming circus that had set up camp on the Caelic isles, but which would return into Vrettonian territory soon.

Lorcan's living standard improved somewhat while he also had the opportunity to widen his horizons in terms of culture and arts. It could have been his dwelling place still if there had not been the fancy idea of its two human owners to expand their shared business by hosting exhibition fights. Small at first, but more and more serious once they noticed how much more their audience preferred it that way. Of course they needed staff for this and found a Skayleigh to be a viable candidate: Rare, unusual, taller than everyone else and with the ability to make himself appear like a tree while riding a horse -- or a tree that could suddenly backstab passer-bys. People liked it, and the learning curve the two Vrettonian's designed for the so far completely unexperienced Lorcan was gentle enough for him not only to stay alive, but to slowly erode his hesitation to hurt other beings.

The most bloodthirsty actions would still have been to come had it been not for the event that forced Lorcan to leave the North altogether.


Reason for Exile
It was an accident! No, really... Lorcan did know that the rules for all fighters stated that it was forbidden to use long-range weaponry against opponents when there was any significant danger of it hitting the stands, but from down below he just couldn't see that damn short dwarf sitting there so quickly. He thought the area behind his opponent was empty, so he launched the throwing axe anyway.

The dwarves weren't happy. In fact the loss of one rather high-ranking individual made them so pissed that the Vrettonians escalated things towards the Skayleigh clan Lorcan belonged to. Even the clan noticed they might be better off doing something about it. Giving Lorcan a death sentence however ? Hand him over to the dwarves so they could do it ? That wasn't exactly compatible with the general consensus among the Skayleigh population that they should not fight against each other. So they made an agreement that involved a more indirect method of disposal: Send Lorcan to the south, hopefully never to be seen again.

Why Lorcan was sent on the mainland and the Blood Coast in particular is a bit of a mystery to him, but not to the Vrettonian administration: The Caelic isles are isolated by the sea already anyway, so releasing him on some remote island would not have added any additional security in terms of geography. Also the sentence for him stated 'exile', not 'death', so the Skayleigh clan had been insistent about Lorcan's destination not being so extremely wild, remote and unforgiving that leaving him there alone would effectively have equaled certain death. On the main land there's at least some kind of infrastructure remotely available to help with survival so one cannot claim that the way the exile sentence has been carried out is just an unscrupulous method of even saving the coin for a proper executioner.

Putting him together with a bunch of unknown criminals of various backgrounds is quite a bit of a gamble, but frankly Lorcan wasn't worth the effort of hiring an entirely separate escort just to spare him the experience of a mass transport.


Motivation
Lorcan has analyzed the overall situation enough to recognize that he can't go back, even if he'd be able to just walk out of the South. So far away there's no real way for him to know whether he's still a persona non grata in his corner of the North -- and he considers his life too precious a thing to just try it out.

It would be a little hard for someone who has restrained himself to harmless street entertainment to join a band of people known to be criminals, but Lorcan has gone far beyond harmless many years ago. With his activities in the arena, killing people he effectively did not know for the sake of coin, he has effectly become some sort of a mercenary anyway. Also, just like always, he hopes that it won't become too bad.

Capabilities

Attributes

Combat

• Exotic weaponry

Intelligence

Charisma

• Musical instrument

Health

• Strength
• Rejuvenation
• Stamina

Faculties

• Concentration
• Tamer

Agility

• Ride
• Balance

Mysticism

---

Equipment

• A long knife
• A tattered cloak
• A set of brigand's clothes
• Traveling rations for one day

Money
5 silver lordlings

Languages

---

Character Relationships

Faeril Skywatcher

A dwarf! He definitely looks like a force to be reckoned with and I wouldn't want to stand in his way, but I can't help but still feel anger whenever he comes into my view. It it weren't for the dwarves I wouldn't be here!

After the fight with the bandits:
So he can stand his ground, but maybe, just maybe, he could stop considering me being an idiot ?

Emmaline Von Morganstern

We can consider ourselves lucky to have seen her while the harsh surroundings have not yet eradicated all of her beauty. Part of me wishes she's only here because she's a pampered noble involved in some kind of scandal and not someone truly villainous. But who knows... As much as some other part of me just wants to fully embrace her, I probably should not.

After the fight with the bandits:
I won't prevent her from committing suicide the next time! Maybe she's really a pampered noble who doesn't know shit ?

Reyvadin Ismirala Vaegir

He seems to be one of the more difficult nuts to crack here, or at least he makes his hardened shell more obvious than the others. Can't truly blame him, because given his looks it probably was a very sudden fall from riches to rags. Where would my mind go in such a situation ? Let's hope he doesn't do anything really stupid.

After the fight with the bandits:
So far the lad seems to be okay. Maybe I should actually try to become friends with him.

Migi Blackbarrow

If I still were with the Vrettonians and their wandering fair I'd definitely try to talk to my boss and make him employ her for her fierce words and general attitude. If she fights as well as she talks I probably should try to get some armor for my ankles first, because that's almost as high as she can reach in my case.

After the fight with the bandits:
My opinion hasn't changed much.

Raddek Granton

He appears to me as a dark, unfathomed abyss. Is there any spark left in this man that brightens him up from time to time ? I can't tell, and maybe I'm completely off in the first place because we're in anything but a neutral and long-lasting environment at this point, but for now I feel like having to handle Raddek with utmost care -- for my own sake that is.

After the fight with the bandits:
Maybe one of the most formidable fighters around here. Let's hope he stays with us for a while longer. However there's a big city ahead and that's an entirely different topic.

Blades of the Blood Coast

@Fetzen
Accepted as well! Just give a reason he would be taken to be sentence on the mainland. And he needs to be on the prison wagon too, so just provide a solid reason and he's good.

@POOHEAD189

Would the following meet the criteria of a good reason ?

---

Why Lorcan was sent on the mainland and the Blood Coast in particular is a bit of a mystery to him, but not to the Vrettonian administration: The Caelic isles are isolated by the sea already anyway, so releasing him on some remote island would not have added any additional security in terms of geography. Also the sentence for him stated 'exile', not 'death', so the Skayleigh clan had been insistent about Lorcan's destination not being so extremely wild, remote and unforgiving that leaving him there alone would effectively have equaled certain death. On the main land there's at least some kind of infrastructure remotely available to help with survival so one cannot claim that the way the exile sentence has been carried out is just an unscrupulous method of even saving the coin for a proper executioner.

Putting him together with a bunch of unknown criminals of various backgrounds is quite a bit of a gamble, but frankly Lorcan wasn't worth the effort of hiring an entirely separate escort just to spare him the experience of a mass transport. There's a lot of coin to be saved by handling things more efficiently...

---

Just wanting to ask before putting something stupid in the CS tab!

Blades of the Blood Coast

Apologies for not having updated Lorcan yet. Release weeks suck!

Also, looking at the height chart, I think if I'd gone for the An-Hasst route it would have been even more fun He was a tad taller than Lorcan.

Blades of the Blood Coast

Guess I'll fall asleep right were I sit now, hope it's not too bad!

Lorcan

Lorcan

Skayleigh | 43 | Male

Appearance

Lorcan's height can be considered rather average for a Skayleigh, but years of straining work have made his limbs grow thicker and his body more muscular. He's a fair distance away from being all bulked up, but it's easy to notice that he holds a big lot of power.

His skin resembles that of his wood elven cousins, exhibiting a rather tan complexion and a decent lack of impurities. There is some scarring, but it's at places not visible as long as there's your typical set of clothes present. His hair and face are a different matter tough: The former's long and fuzzy and the latter's coarse and appears a little 'flat' given his stubby nose and shallow eye sockets, both more suited to a giant than a wood elf. Staring at you is a set of curious eyes with strikingly green-ish irises, but if you don't want to look at those you can enjoy strips of dark beard covering his jawline and the part above his thin lips.

Personality

Lorcan sits rather high up in terms of optimism and his exile, as ferociously unwanted as it is, has not changed much about that yet. It would not be the first time for him to happily accept a daring risk not really necessary -- not because he'd like to boast or has a secret desire for hazardous situation, but because his estimation of chances is biased and bad experiences get priority in terms of deletion. It's a layer of ostensible dumbness hiding the fact that Lorcan's mind is proper and more than capable of producing ideas that are basically sound.

However, just as his ideas sometimes lack refinement, so do other parts of his behavior: Lazyness is a very nice-to-have feature in life that should be implemented frequently, just as is with eating and drinking. There's a bit of a 'don't care' attitude to him, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't know the concept of loyality in both the positive and the negative sense. Once a certain goal has been set in his mind, he can be very tenacious to achieve it. The same holds true towards those who have managed to tag themselves friend or foe.

Background

• Profession: Entertainer, both the joyful and the more vicious kind of it
• Class: Bard
• Heritage: Son of an ordinary, low-ranking family

History
Lorcan was born in a place close to the eastern tip of the Caelic Isles called Droichead. It is an island whose primary function is to serve as a bridging point for the two adjacent isles which are all close together, but much, much larger than Droichead. Due to its small size, rocky soil and lack of other natural resources the settlement there had only been significant as long as there had been the opportunity to make traders pay customs. This no longer was the case when Lorcan was born, so he was somewhat destined to raise in poverty and an overall rather boring environment.

The young boy tried to make some coin by entertaining people on the streets, using a simple flute and whatever other instrument he could find and learn to play. It worked, but just barely so. One could say that after a few years on the lower end of things the young Skayleigh was an all too easy catch for everyone who could promise something exciting. Lorcan joined a roaming circus that had set up camp on the Caelic isles, but which would return into Vrettonian territory soon.

Lorcan's living standard improved somewhat while he also had the opportunity to widen his horizons in terms of culture and arts. It could have been his dwelling place still if there had not been the fancy idea of its two human owners to expand their shared business by hosting exhibition fights. Small at first, but more and more serious once they noticed how much more their audience preferred it that way. Of course they needed staff for this and found a Skayleigh to be a viable candidate: Rare, unusual, taller than everyone else and with the ability to make himself appear like a tree while riding a horse -- or a tree that could suddenly backstab passer-bys. People liked it, and the learning curve the two Vrettonian's designed for the so far completely unexperienced Lorcan was gentle enough for him not only to stay alive, but to slowly erode his hesitation to hurt other beings.

The most bloodthirsty actions would still have been to come had it been not for the event that forced Lorcan to leave the North altogether.


Reason for Exile
It was an accident! No, really... Lorcan did know that the rules for all fighters stated that it was forbidden to use long-range weaponry against opponents when there was any significant danger of it hitting the stands, but from down below he just couldn't see that damn short dwarf sitting there so quickly. He thought the area behind his opponent was empty, so he launched the throwing axe anyway.

The dwarves weren't happy. In fact the loss of one rather high-ranking individual made them so pissed that the Vrettonians escalated things towards the Skayleigh clan Lorcan belonged to. Even the clan noticed they might be better off doing something about it. Giving Lorcan a death sentence however ? Hand him over to the dwarves so they could do it ? That wasn't exactly compatible with the general consensus among the Skayleigh population that they should not fight against each other. So they made an agreement that involved a more indirect method of disposal: Send Lorcan to the south, hopefully never to be seen again.


Motivation
Lorcan has analyzed the overall situation enough to recognize that he can't go back, even if he'd be able to just walk out of the South. So far away there's no real way for him to know whether he's still a persona non grata in his corner of the North -- and he considers his life too precious a thing to just try it out.

It would be a little hard for someone who has restrained himself to harmless street entertainment to join a band of people known to be criminals, but Lorcan has gone far beyond harmless many years ago. With his activities in the arena, killing people he effectively did not know for the sake of coin, he has effectly become some sort of a mercenary anyway. Also, just like always, he hopes that it won't become too bad.

Capabilities

Attributes

Combat

• Exotic weaponry

Intelligence

Charisma

• Musical instrument

Health

• Strength
• Rejuvenation
• Stamina

Faculties

• Concentration
• Tamer

Agility

• Ride
• Balance

Mysticism

---

Equipment

Money

Languages

---

Character Relationships

Your characters have only known one another for the week it has taken to move your wagon through the Inner Kingdoms, with only a marginal time to speak. This is where you put your initial thoughts of each character, and you edit these as their opinions change. This also includes the Merc NPC.

Character Name

Character Name

Character Name

Character Name

Character Name

Blades of the Blood Coast

Halfway done with my cutie!

Winds of Fate - A Thieves' Adventure (Semi-Tabletop)

Skarsat

Skarsat's sleep, at least this night, could be considered a very deep one for sure. Had the encounter with Vargas and his 'entourage' of parfumed women drained all of that well-trained Tork hardship out of him, or had the wine he had poured down so aggressively just to get done with its bad taste flushed away his general wariness ? Or, maybe, had the prolonged exposure to the comforts of the east made him soft so he could just drop dead onto a big bed instead of having to care about wild animals and the tribe's decision to get moving in the middle of the night ?

Whatever it was, Skarsat currently lacked the motivation to care about when he woke up. He bumped his head against one of the ceiling's supporting beams as he tried to raise to his full height and rubbed his scalp. No blood shed, but a reason to look forward to sleep under a free night's sky again. Through the blurry mess that was his vision right after wakeup, Skarsat could see a mistake he had made hours earlier: leave the window open when there were festivities going on! Pidgeons, seagulls and other birds who had accustomed themselves to the busy life of Guillan had happily accepted the opportunity to sit down and relax instead of having to search for food while flying. Had their wing flaps and cooing caused him to wake up ? Maybe.

A lot worse however was the fact that birds were clever beings who tended to toss any surplus weight overboard before taking off, so the window's ledge, the wall and the floor right next to the window on the inside were littered with the occasional bit of poo. One of those birds even still dared to sit on the ledge and stare down at what remained of the festivity's remains! What would Percy say if he'd be delivered a pidgeon for cooking with its head torn off ? Skarsat realized it had only potential to turn over some of the other people's stomachs while creating even more of a mess around the window, so he abandoned the thought quickly. Still the bird found itself pushed away from the ledge not exactly gently -- and the window shut behind it with a loud bang.

A staircase's abundant creaking announced the tork man's approach and, with a facial expression that told a story about some unfinished sleep, sat down at the place of his choice: near the wall with not that many chairs adjacent to it. A few people were okay, but he did not like things overcrowded. Percival was busy as if the man had not slept at all. What kind of jobs had the poor man already had on his list ? If he was looking forward to this weird party's departure one could hardly blame him, could one ?

Skarsat collected a few smallre fruits, some eggs and a large piece of bread. Doing so he spotted a piece of parchment apparently laid out for them: the Bazaar vendors ? Good to know. Skarsat could see little use in buying some exotic birds or other pets before departure, but some additional arrows and provisions could definitely come in handy.