HereComesTheSnow

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Fantasy Knight RP

Gerard's horse, Horse, is about middlingly yoinkable. Very if your hair is black and messy.

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Fantasy Knight RP

No worries, no worries
I"ll be getting a post up by the end of the week hopefully, need to catch up in a lot of games

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Fantasy Knight RP

It should be the middle of the night now, right? If I recall correctly, we arrived at Daelantine in the late hours of the day/ early in the evening. I assume we rode effectively straight out from the Fort.

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Fantasy Knight RP

Gerard Segremors

@Crimson Paladin@VitaVitaAR

"The Silver Stone, huh?" Gerard murmured, pensive furrow to the brow only deepening as hints beget yet more questions. It colored his tone, lending a thick smoke of contemplation to his voice. He mulled over the loose scrawling of the note, flipping the scrap of parchment between his fingers multiple times, as if each about-face would reveal a key to the deeper meaning. He wasn't getting far, and found his eyes wandering back towards the body of the guardsman, now laid fully upon the floor instead of slumped along the doorframe.

Abigail's eyes were keen not only to inflict wounds, as any in their her line of work would need to be, but also to analyze them post-mortem. By his eye, none of what she'd extracted from the single red line in the man's windpipe was incorrect, reaching the same conclusions he had in about the same time, give or take— in all honesty, probably a little more extensively than his evaluation. But nonetheless, every word was true. One clean cut, no signs of struggle or prolonged contact. He'd sooner expect this from an assassin taking a man in his sleep, or...

Suicide?

Seems unlikely, given the wider context. Then again, the Boars...

Having found no trace of the offending weapon left behind in the wound (a stretch to begin with), Gerard had rummaged through the man's uniform, seeking out a weapon, perhaps a well-hidden tattoo of the selfsame group of mercenaries— to no avail. In the place of things that would link back to what they'd already learned, was the cryptic note he now beheld. Why the Silver Stone? Was the shard headed there, or had it come? Was the perpetrator? Was there some deeper significance, beyond the first site of worship of the Moonlit Goddess Mayon? Perhaps built to honor the moment mankind knew of her deification, all he had known of the Hallowed Ground was passed on through legend and folk tale.

"Either of you ever been?" he asked aloud, holding the note up behind him to Sir Fleuri as he stared a flummoxed hole into the corpse. If he were a betting man? Surely his fellow knight, a man that had grown to strength beneath the tutelage of an honored Paladin, was the more likely of his current band to have visited personally. "I'm at a loss. My home is far, far closer to the Golden, as were most of my battles in the prior line of work. Never seen Lady Mayon's shrine with my own eyes."

As it stood, he had no working guesses how this incident and the Stone interlinked. While he was certain they'd end up investigating the eldest of shrines, he still felt they ought to have an idea of what they were looking for.

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Fantasy Knight RP

Doog

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Fantasy Knight RP

post soon, i’m an old man now

Advance on Distant Proxima (Mecha RPG)

---

<<Solid copy, Odysseus. Currently loitering in local airspace until primary egress has finished. I'll be two clicks southwest of everyone until I follow you topside. Maintaining altitude at 1500.>>

The crisp, lightly accented tones returned as the Arthurian knight drifted in a lazy spiral outward from the previously marked AO towards his stated overwatch point, silver armor tinted red from the crimson glow of his beam saber. Beneath his helmet, the pilot's eyes scanned the seemingly featureless sands below, not affording himself the chance to metaphorically lean back behind the controls. Every so often, his gaze slid back again to the torn pile of scrap that he had felled, an unforseen threat that— if the amount of pings he had momentarily seen beneath them were any indication— were liable to repeat, potentially at any time.

Far be it from him to expect a welcoming party an entire star system away, but still, the military experience within the expedition team was paying clear dividends where things stood at present. Such being the case...

<<... No complaints from me.>>

Michael's pilot could only offer a strained acquiescence to his ribbing. That, combined with her performance (truthfully lack thereof) in combat, needed ironing out. A decidedly civilian element in the detachment, Stel... Nebula, it was. had what may well have been an orbital-grade Ferrari at her fingertips, bleeding edge tech from the far-flung facilities on Pluto— but it would amount to nothing if she couldn't leverage it. Her flight hours, from what he remembered, hardly scratched the double digits. Heavy simulation, but no live combat. No maneuvering its weight under duress, learning the response of mass to control.

<<Always next time. Mount up for atmospheric burn.>>

They'd need to hammer that lead pit in her stomach out, before it got her killed. Joint exercises were doubtlessly on the itinerary, and if they weren't they would be, now that the expedition team had seen combat. Castle or Zakharin would likely need to give oversight until she'd gotten used to her Orbital.

Maybe even he'd have to shadow her. Who knew? Good a kid as she seemed, they needed her up to speed and didn't have the time nor stage to wait on it. If that was how the chips fell, he knew how to play taskmaster.

As the skies were painted orange, first by smoke and the by fire, Konstantin watched each chariot rise toward the stars, the returning victors of this first conquest into foreign land, silver plunder in tow.

Once more he looked to the mysterious sands, many more untold battles and discoveries beneath.

And then, as the final blaze screamed into the heavens, the Knight rode back to the Round Table awaiting high above.

Secundi Lux

---

A low, almost rumbling chuckle rose from Selma's belly, as she took in turn the rod, then sandwich from her newly christened teammate. Aoife Sturmgaard, as she had grown to know in the weeks following their induction as Ars Magi trainees, was the queen of wave and storm. Normally still and placid, easygoing as the babbling brook at which they sat, but thrown into combat she was as the hurricane itself, the crashing waves that tore against the coast. In that sense Selma found a kinship that was almost impossible to ignore, even in the face of the natural awkwardness of having her as a late arrival to their motley crew.

Rod in her right hand, she took a moment to offer a small well wish towards the next life to the worm that writhed around the dangling metal hook.

It was nice to have another person that approached fights for the pure thrill of it— Rivka was one to enjoy herself, sure, but hers was a pursuit of beautiful symphony, an orchestra in motion, everything falling into its perfect place, harmonizing as she sculpted it. Crystal was a technician to the core, trained well and composed when it counted, but she seemed to not quite take the same joy, to feel less of the revelry Selma felt in a brawl. Chie, to her eternal credit, had clearly been making strides in Selma's watchful eye, settling in as the weeks of training and structured fostering of their abilities gave her a true base of skill to fall back on. She was still very much a work in progress— they all were, but Selma couldn't help but admit that she was probably the closest one here to a normal young girl when it came to mentality.

Sandwich in her left, she took a hearty bite, letting the tang of mustard explode over her tongue as it brightened the savory ham and nutty cheese between the bread, ponderously chewing.

On one hand, it would put her at a bit of a disadvantage as Ars Magi put themselves regularly in extraordinary situations, forcing a harsher adjustment in attitude than the others— but on the other, it also meant she was the furthest from forgetting her roots as one of the people they were pledging their lives to protect. That was every bit as important as being able to turn on killer instinct in Selma's mind. She'd been sure to try to remind her of that in the many nighttime chats they'd shared as roommates. She had her own strengths, things the rest of them could never do. Stuff like that.

But Aoife seemed to share the joy Selma took in battle. She did not require perfection, she had no need of second guesses. She flowed through the chaos and energy of combat, ebbing and rippling with it as though born for the clamor. It was an easy point of kinship, only fostered through the combat exercises the school had put the two through. One was the flowing river, taking the form of the ever-changing vessel of her combative context, a master of the field. The other was a sturdy mountain, in many ways unbothered and welcoming of all the war that its face beheld— an ever-present part of the field itself, laughing even as the world around it shifted.

With a single raise of the elbow and flick of the wrist, the big girl cast her line, turning to meet the Sturmgaard name's latest and greatest product with a gentle smirk.

"Every day. Like you wouldn't believe. Whenever we finish a lesson I wanna collapse onto a hay bale and not think for the next week." she said, plain as the morning slowly rising around them. The light of the stream, a dancing cascade of patterns in white against her emerald eyes, seemed to take a wistful tint. "At the very least, I wish I could tell my family so i could make sure I got it all right, y'know?"

Her left hand, freshly relieved of sandwich after transferring it to the mouth where it slowly retreated in behind her teeth, made a loose fist and rapped against her skull, sending moss-colored locks in a light sway.

"Ol' rohck brain don' work too goo', y'know?" she joked through proteins and carbohydrates with what seemed to be practiced clarity.

Taking a moment to finish her food properly, she then snorted.

"Hell, I was born missing home. It's why I wanted this, after all... Family's been wanting to go back to the Black Forest since long before me."

The wistful tint went somewhere far, far away for one, two, then three moments before blinking away as she returned to the present.

"We are, aren't we?" she agreed, a toothy grin blossoming into her cheeks as she playfully punched the smaller girl on the shoulder. "You an' I are must-see-TV, even compared to everyone else."

Sensing a tug on the rod, she leaned forward, gripping the reel.

"We're all gonna be great. With how long I take to learn things, I know for a fact that you four are wowin' everyone already. Wouldn't trade you girls for the world."

Advance on Distant Proxima (Mecha RPG)

poor stel

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Fantasy Knight RP

getting the gears moving