Lugubrious

Project Crossover [Video Game Crossover RP]

Azura
Level 1
Day 3
Location: The Land of Skyrim
Experience: |||||||||| (0/10)
Word Count: 698

Ounce by ounce, the jabbing pain in Azura's innermost parts dissolved, and with guarded optimism she surveyed the results of her endeavor. One of her allies, the strange young man who identified himself as Vent, followed up her serenade with a second plea for nonviolence. Piper, too, did her best to assure the warriors that they meant no harm. Clearly they, too, felt the soothing touch of her song. Opposite her party the locals' advance had slowed to a crawl, their hostility numbed. When Azura glanced at the last two member of her team, however, their posture gave her cause to worry. The soldier, strange weapon in hand, appeared more than militant—he seemed apt to attack at any moment, already rid of whatever peace the princess' enchanted aria brought him. Were he malevolent, he'd be sweating bullets right now at the very least, she reasoned, eyes narrowed. The only possibility is that war is baked into him, that mindlessly following commands is so second-nature that he can't deviate from his course. Would the biggest threat to a working relationship between these two supposedly allied groups come from one of her own?

Azura's voice, low and urgent, flew to him through the frigid air. ”What are you, an attack dog? These are allies, so lower your weapon.” Coolly she considered that her words -her orders- challenged the authority of the Boss as well as the ego of this hardened soldier. Did Ruben chew on what he was fed, or could he decide for himself what was best, including matters of leadership? Surely he recognized the Boss's blatant incompetence. Either way, Azura needed to find out. She watched out of the corners of her yellow eyes as more Nords approached, including an important-looking fellow. Despite the potential powder kegs in her midst, things looked as though they would sort out alright.

Boom.

Her eyes flew open as the Boss commented on her performance, realizing what he meant just as he gave his command. She whirled around, sending her hair flying. ”No!”

A beam of light appeared in her vision, and without thinking she leaped to the left. With a dancer's grace she landed on her feet, whirling once again to watch the energy ray burn a hole straight through a snowdrift. [color]“Thoron!?”[/color] The attack didn't seem to be Thunder magic, but there was no time to quibble over what sorcery it was. More beams surged forward, flying forth from a group of barbarians wielding catalysts that contrasted their fur pelts something fierce. With no cover near enough to escape the onslaught, Azura threw herself down into the snow next to her lance. There, her white coat allowed her to practically disappear. She lay there, adrenaline making her breath rapid, thinking. She could wait here, hidden by the snow, until enemies got close enough for an ambush, but considering her limited field of view and lack of any sort of expertise as an assassin she doubted it would be her best bet. Instead, she settled on a better plan. Almost everyone around her, after all, had been lulled into a nonhostile mood by her previous song. To avoid a slow start and being overwhelmed by the Forsworn marauders, they needed a pick me up. Azura rolled onto her back, clutching her lance to hold to her chest as she did. Though not at all ideal for a rousing performance, this situation could be improved by a quick verse. Once again, her melodic voice broke the morning air.

”Heroes bringing us hope's light!
Journey from distant worlds
To still the coming night!”

The stanza, sung more quickly and with more energy than before, wiped away the soothing haze that her previous song had wrought. It would, she expected, galvanize her allies into action, perhaps even give them enough of a burst of energy to dodge incoming shots, and allow them to make a dent in the Forsworn attack. Once their magic was suppressed, she could get up and join the fight, but while those beams continued to flash across the landscape she couldn't risk revealing herself. Holding back a groan, she tried to bury the painful stings that prickled her in silence.

The Crucible - Winner Take All

You said it! There's no guarantee it'll stay up and working, but things are looking up. I'll start working on bits of a new post.

My Villain Academia - Our World Not Theirs!

Alright now that we have the site back for a period of time should I end this rp due to lack of players, or keep it going? I'm asking because people were posting rather slowly.

@vancexentan

Because we don't have very much free reign deciding the result of our actions, our environments, or what's in them, we don't have a lot to work with for posting and can basically only react to what you do. Mana did get attacked by another blast of petals, but nothing happened that concerned Ludmilla, so my options for instance are limited. I could have her put up another field to try and stop the petal attack, but you've already shown that it doesn't work, so why would she reasonably do that? I'm essentially waiting for a cue, and I imagine it's the same for the others to a great or lesser extent. Because this is what we're faced with, motivation to post is also down. That's my guess why posting has been slow.

Fire Emblem: The Eternal War [ENDED]

For your consideration:

Rionach

Appearance:

Clothed in garb that manages to be ostentatious even with muted colors, Rionach can be said to do everything in her power appearance-wise to create an image that is memorable. Her close-cropped, bright-red hair bears a long bandanna and a jaunty feather, and it crowns a face that despite prominent brows, a Roman nose, and somewhat thin lips, cannot reasonably said to be unattractive. Aware of this, no doubt, Rionach's mostly-practical choice of dress -made purposefully and without trepidation- helps accentuate this aspect of her. At 5'8" tall and 160 lbs, she boasts a well-built physique. It, along with the engaging glimmer seldom lacking in her dull gray-blue eyes, makes hers an eye-catching visage without being quite so bold, tacky, or showy as to imply self-absorption

Name: Rionach (pronounced ria-nack)

Sex: Female

Class: Soldier

Starting Weapons: Uprising Spear – a long, flexible spear decent for throwing and excellent for vaulting up into the air

History: One cannot speak of the kingdom of Valentia without bringing to mind its long and storied schism—the story of Rigel and Zofia, only relatively recently reunited as one sovereign nation through the marriage of Prince Albein Alm Rudolf and Princess Anthiese after a bitter and brutal time of conflict. This era, dubbed the 'Twilight of the Gods', gripped every corner of the realm. Even in mountainous southeastern Rigel, the wave of upheaval brought about by the divine dragon Duma's degeneration surged forth. There, an earthquake nearly brought ruin to the city of Gadanka, ripping open a great chasm that cut off the only routes through the mountains toward the kingdom's central cities. The populace's hard life grew harder, improving only marginally as a semblance of trade resumed over time. Now isolated in an unforgiving region, Gadanka lost wave after wave of citizens to emigration, shrinking from an icon of the mining and hunting industries to a remote town, lost in the wilderness and forgotten.

Rionach was born well after Gadanka became a footnote in the history book of the new kingdom of Valentia. Starting at an early age, she exhibited a great energy and drive to improve the situation of her fellow townsfolk. With the poor of character weeded out by generations of manageable but nevertheless challenging hardship, the villagers had one anothers' backs through thick and thin, treating one another like family. Rionach cherished her community and its people, believing them to be the purest sort of people imaginable; yet, a sense of frustration always stung her when she wondered why such good people suffered harsh lives, forgotten or ignored by the rest of the world. By the time she reached adulthood, Rionach was already cultivating a plan. Inspired by stories of famous heroes, performers, and other legends, she resolved to take on the mantle of a celebrity herself. Determined to make a name for her long-suffering town and put it back on the map, she declared her intentions to the elders: to go out across the land, win fame and fortune, and make Gadanka a name known the world over. Then, she reasoned, the townsfolk's lives would improve, and they would wallow in nameless irrelevance no longer. Beloved as she was, Rionach received no objection, and was furnished with everything she needed to begin her great adventure.

Before long she set out on her journey, hunting down maps to follow to city after city. Rionach visited them one by one, marveling at their size and culture, getting to know their people and their ways. She bore an enthusiastic smile everywhere she went, drawing eyes in whatever ways she could. Any sort of publicity, she figured, was good. Time after time, however, she found herself confounded. Eyes narrowed when confronted with a woman proclaiming herself as a celebrity from a town nobody ever heard of; her airs and lack of experience with the world pushed others away. Small jobs she found in abundance, performing enough various tasks to live off of without issue. After all, for the sake of her town and the people she loved, no work was too small. But no amount of deer-hunting, cleaning, questing, or construction would ever make her a somebody—the somebody she needed to be. When it came to bigger things, nobody would give a nobody a chance. Though pretty, she could not compete with the truly beautiful. Though naturally talented with a spear, she couldn't hold a candle to the professionally-trained soldiers employed in the army. As witty and agile as she was, a circus troupe lay far out of her purview.
General handiness only went so far against guild craftsmen, whose lifetimes of experience allowed no contest. Everywhere it was the same. With no fortune or noble house to her name, no doors were open for her to elevate her station and justify her behaving like a celebrity. Rionach's pleas and attempts at maneuvering fell on deaf ears, though she became popular enough with the common folk, and she fell into a habit of filling the holes poked in her dreams with wine.

Nevertheless, her spirit is unbroken. She continues to work hard, wandering from place to place, doing whatever she can while looking for an opportunity to seize fame.

Personality: If nothing else, Rionach boasts a larger-than-life personality. Outgoing and talkative, she's adept at making conversation and infusing a little energy into any interaction. This does not overflow into nosiness or blithe chattiness, however. In fact, Rionach is both conscientious and empathetic in addition to being emphatic and dramatic. She is not without either humor or tact. More often than not, she seems to behave as though someone's following her recording her every action for making into a play or story, and it is Rionach's duty to make it as interesting and entertaining as possible. In a sense she acts somewhat like a classic hero, but she is hardly so faultless. Rionach is greedy and, even when good-naturedly doing kind things, primarily self-serving. Her ambition -to win fame for herself and her remote home town- is evident in most of her actions, and sometimes she treads a little too close to the line that divides goal-oriented and desperate for success. Furthermore, while her gregariousness is genuine, deep inside she struggles mightily with self-esteem and identity, sometimes convinced she doesn't have what it takes or that she's betraying her principles or losing who she is in a mad dash for fame. Still, the average person would seldom guess all that behind her cheery smile and charismatic demeanor, and she is a primarily moralistic individual who would never stoop to nefarious means to achieve her goals...probably

bonus

I support the one true pairing, the only lifelong bond that will never be shattered: that special something which exists between Alphonse and the bench

Fire Emblem: The Eternal War [ENDED]

I'm here, and have some ideas rummaging around that should make for a good character.

Heroes of Beacon - Contest of Champions

-0th post-

The Crucible - Winner Take All

@Lugubrious So if Erina heads off with Runch over Motley, does that put her under @ProPro's control, or would I retain control over her? Or would Lazo be put back in control of her? I'm not sure.

@BCTheEntity

Her soul, like Crue's, is now in the possession of Runch, so he retains whatever authority he has over her--not that he could technically stop her from going with Crue. Either way, Propro controls her.

Yo dawg! I heard you liek Fire Emblem... THE REBOOT

Color me interested. I'll keep an eye on how this shapes up.

The Crucible - Winner Take All

The Lady in White

Location: Kno One
@Lazo

Another chuckle resonated through the restaurant in reply to Pithy's barb. “Forgive me. I won't bore you with any more details.” The sensation of predatory eyes, peering from every shadow and every surface, bored into Pithy as she drew near the kitchen. For now, the hallway had turned silent; perhaps her evasion of the lethal fanblades sufficed to demonstrate her mastery over this area. Far from content to keep that quiet intact, however, the Lady in White addressed her omnipresent adversary once again.

“And here I thought we weren't stating the obvious,” the voice chided. Without any obstacle on the way, Pithy could enter the kitchen freely. When she did, she could see that the checker-tiled floor proceeded normally about halfway down the room's length, then promptly turned upward. Appearance-wise, the floor looked like it had been lifted up like a sheet of paper and the end attached to the ceiling. Various facets of cooking equipment kept the fringes of the floor anchored to the ground, but in the openings left but such a phenomenon, hard-packed walls of miscellaneous kitchen items barred the way around. No other mode of entry or exit could be glimpsed in the area that Pithy could access, save the doorway she came in by. The way, it seemed, was shut. “Of course! Though since this is not a lecture, you'll have to figure things out for yourself. Feel free to think of Kno One as an ordinary ghost, if it helps you understand that you cannot harm or interact with it. Now, take a look at this. You've figured out the building itself is invincible, but does that still apply to parts of it I've moved? The tile was part of the floor, after all.” The nearest stoves, which were on, bore pots of water whose bubbles were audible. After the voice grew silent, their lids floated off, and from their sputtering contents stands of pasta began to rise. They slithered through the air like sea snakes through the ocean, moving about in great numbers but in an aimless fashion.

Inari

Location: What Lies Beneath – Toward the Underground City
@Kapuchu

Content to be patient with the pair's cautiousness, Emile waited with relaxed posture and wide-open ears on the chance that Lily elected to respond. When she started speaking, he listened with bated breath. Even with his face masked, he seemed visibly surprised when the kitsune admitted a knowledge of Disney—as taken aback as Lily had been moments before. His shock shifted to a shaking with laughter that he worked hard to suppress when she gave voice to disbelief in the idea that planets could be round. Just before he started to twitch, the faintest whisper of ”Flat earth!” escaped his feathery lips only to be buried beneath his acquaintance's speech. Her next few statements, however, dispelled whatever mirth possessed him in the blink of an eye. Emile sat bolt-upright at the mention of 'isekai', sitting stock-still as though he'd been discovered doing something wrong. After she sighed, seated herself, and explained what isekai was, the owlman gave a nervous laugh. “Heheh...sounds like some super cliché trash, good thing I don't know anything about anything like that...” When it became clear Lily was studying him, he sobered up hastily.

Still focused despite the less-than-concealed emotional roller-coaster Lily put him through, he remained attentive as she gave her own story. At the motion of disks, one of his arms moved into a thinker's position, its elbow resting on the other while its fist lay across the section of his helmet that occluded his mouth. Nothing that she told of rang any bells for him. During her pause, he vocalized what little he could come up with. “Hmm. I've heard of something called Discworld, but I don't know anything about it. Probably not what you're talking about. I'd assumed you were from the past, but you're actually from the future, huh?”

Afterward she proceeded into answering the critical part of his inquiry: the workings of the tournament, of which he harbored only a basic knowledge. He mulled over the information as it was presented, turning his head to gaze off into the middle ground. When Brucie began to speak, however, he glanced his way just in time to watch Lily silence him with a jolt of lightning. With as many beans spilled as she deemed appropriate, then, she posed him another question. Flashy as the fiery feather was, the gears racing in his mind occupied him for another few moments. Only after another “hmm...” did he allow his attention, once eagerly given, return to her.

“I cannot be sure, but the most well-known fictional feather in my homeworld is called 'Phoenix Down'. I believe it revives a near-death ally it is used on.” Something in his tone had changed, growing more serious and a touch slower. Contractions disappeared, and his slouch gave way to proper, straight-backed posture. “Let us rewind for a moment, however. Were you about to say 'phylactery', hammerhead?” Holding his right hand up and open for a moment to make it clear he was going to use it, Emile reached into his pocket and withdrew a palm-sized object. Dark red, or perhaps black, in color, it resembled a heart drained of all life. He span it on one finger, a sudden current of air keeping it aloft and rotating. “When the scouting party found the corpse of my friend Clotho, this was on her. Afterward, she told us what little she knew about it, and the tournament. If we find where poor Verrine died, I'm guessing she will have one of these, too.” Sighing, Emile let the inert phylactery fall into his palm before stashing it in his pocket. When his eyes reopened, they locked with Lily's. “As you might have gathered, two of my friends were brought to this tournament to fight, and both were killed. It has left me hurt, but it is not healthy to dwell on such pain.” He placed his hands by his legs, their palms on his stone seat. “Not that I blame you two. Unless you have traveled a very long way, there is no reason to believe either of you were the killers.”

As if trying looking for some sort of help from above, he tilted his head back and stared into the darkness between him and the cavern roof. “So, the winner of this tournament gets one wish. Maybe it is a blessing that Clotho dropped out, heh. She is an ambitious one. I dread what Verrine might have wished for...” He shivered, then shook his head with a chuckle. His composure seemed to relax, suggesting that something in the back of his mind that had been needling him had been resolved. His manner of speaking, not unlike rambling meant to fill time, returned to normal. “Hmph, what am I talking about? Knowing her, she would've wanted me to be happy. Anyway!” Emile clapped his hands together, looking between Brucie and Lily. “From my calculations, you're ready for the semifinals. Eight souls under your belt, is it? That's one-fourth of a wish. A heavy burden to bear. And when the load gets heavy, it's a good idea to have a lot of friends.”

Emile disappeared.

His practically-instant displacement sent a blast of wind in the direction of Lily and Brucie. It lasted only a split second, but it was blistering in its speed and power. More a screech than a howl, it blew into them and faded away almost as suddenly as its maker, who now stood on top of the pillar with arms crossed. Though the whole thing happened so fast as to leave pretty much anyone flustered if not tumbling, what happened could be pieces together: though Emile's departure was invisible to the human eye, he had not teleported. Instead, it was his physical movement from a sitting position to his current pillar-top perch that created the surprise gale—unintentionally, a mere byproduct of natural locomotion, like the wake of a boat that might sweep away of school of minnows. In the alcove where he sat previously, two intricate sabers lay against the wall, unused and abandoned by the man they had been hidden behind throughout the whole exchange. When the owlman spoke, his voice came louder and stronger than before. “On behalf of the guild Air Rave, I offer you our services.” He indicated the citadel-backed raven with a dramatic flick of his wrist. “With our help, you can win the tournament no problem. All I ask in exchange is what we work together to amend your wish, whatever it is, to help us out, too. After all, the wish has no limits. There's no reason we can't all get what we want.” To punctuate his words, he held up his left hand. On the appropriate finger a ring began to glow bright white, the crest of interlocking wings on its face visible in the radiance.

The Cereal Killer and the Book Keeper

Location: Flooded Historical District
@Propro@BCTheEntity

Evan as Motley launched himself into the air, preparing a final attack to ensure its fatality, Aralynn gave no sign of being aware of it. For a brief moment her struggle grew more feverish, but the pain that even the slightest movement brought upon her stung her back into stillness, wherein she could get as close as possible to relief. Around her the Boys of Summer stood, noiseless and resolute as frontline soldiers before a cavalry charge.

It wasn't long before the vampire's chemical assault, carefully articulated, blasted forth. A deluge of caustic stomach acid accompanied piercing spurts of pressurized blood, all fixated on the sitting duck at water's edge. Her brother's small army of grim specters went to work, dutifully sliding in front of each incoming blast one after another. The vile liquids' speed necessitated the Boys of Summer to cluster together to prevent any getting through, and for a brief instant the onslaught hung in the air, thick enough to make the sunlight dapple; then, the first target made contact with the first projectile. Together the pair fizzled out of existence, more speedy and anticlimactic than the feed on a turned-off television. After that, the interceptions came hard and fast. When the blood beams vanished, they left behind a trace of negation that continued to erase any blood that followed, which could be said to count as the same attack by whatever bizarre and ephemeral rules governed Boys of Summer's usage. With one beam gone after another, the acid shower began to coalesce, but well in advance of the entire acid attack's negation, the silent protectorate was depleted. Faint, strangled gasps of true agony could heard over the sound of melting flesh. For a few, fleeting moments, a mechanical shape could be seen to be hovering over Aralynn's body, but it soon faded away into vapor along with the aura that surrounded her. After forty seconds, only a smoldering ooze and acid-scarred bones gave evidence that she ever existed.

Capes of Denver: A Worm RP

@Lugubrious
Have I ever mentioned how much I enjoy Margrave updates?

@Old Amsterdam

Maybe, but either way, I'm glad I could make it enjoyable!