mickilennial

Pariah Online: A Voyage into the Intangible Aether

Location: The Laughing Worg Tavern, The City-State of Thorinn, Aetheria

---

“How many of us are gonna be needed for this investigation stuff, anyway? Kalie’s feeling sick after the dungeon, so she’s resting. Gonna be up to us to get done what we need to get done.”

Siegfried was worried, but he decided not to show it. Kalie had come back from the dungeon with Rael, Graves, and Alja well enough but it seemed like she needed a rest day, so after a quick chat in the marketplace Siegfried felt the need to remind himself to mention she wasn’t doing so good to the group. He doubted Kazuki needed to go heal her up or anything, she was still dealing with stuff that Siegfried didn’t feel like prying about.

“I’m not keen on playing Batman with you guys, so you can do that while I help with anything we need back here. There's a forge at me and Sif's place, anyway.” He looked at Kazuki, “I’m gonna need to start raking in the dough if I’m going to keep our house. I hope your plan to get through to the queen works, but if it doesn't I need to do what I do.”

His sister nodded, “To summarize, based on the information discussed we need to work on this investigation, network with other wayfarer guilds and people we know, collect world quests, communicate with craftsman organizations in the city, and try to talk with the queen. I’d also suggest helping Artemis here with anything she needs as well as meeting up with Mystic Prophecy and checking up on Priscilica and the others. I suppose we should figure out who is doing what and in what order?”

Where It Always Rains

die or something ok

“What the hell do you want? Leave me alone.”

Akari, saying some shit

ＮＡＭＥ
Sakaguchi Akari

ＡＧＥ
16 | November 2nd

ＡＰＰＥＡＲＡＮＣＥ
Akari is on the taller end of girls her own age, it’s something that’s just kind of been the reccurring trend since the latter half of elementary school.

Standing at 175 centimeters (around 5’9”) at sixteen years old makes her taller than some of the boys at Utsubyo High School, not that she particularly cares. If someone comes up to her and says “wow you’re so tall!” she’s going to deck them right in the mouth. Beyond her height the old thing that’s really distinct is her scarlet irises. Her hair is black, like so many other people. Her skin is light, but not pale; she’s played sports before, she knows how to go outside. Who in their right mind would want to lock themselves up in their house in this town? The outdoors are depressing, sure, but inside is way way worse.

ＰＥＲＳＯＮＡＬＩＴＹ
Angry
Anxious
Blunt
Cynical
Distant
Impulsive
Perceptive

ＬＩＫＥＳ

• Ariyoshi Café Tea Lattes
• Being left alone
• Competitive Sports, to get the anger out
• The Great Outdoors
• Singing, to the amusement of those who find out
• Solitary Places, to get some peace and quiet

ＤＩＳＬＩＫＥＳ

• Addicts
• Annoyances
• Dishonesty
• Excuses
• Her Height, and comments on it
• Whining

ＨＩＳＴＯＲＹ
Sakaguchi Akari used to have a pretty tolerable life. Some might say it was pretty good for someone born without much money or convenience in a town like Utsubyo.

Katsurō was the definition of a laid back factory worker, and when his wife, Komako, bore twins it pretty much changed everything in their lives. They barely had prepared for one child in their two bedroom home in the cheapest part of town to live in. But the two had stuck with each other since high school and nothing would change that going forward, or at least, that’s how they felt at the time. Nonetheless, for about seven years Akari and her twin brother grew up in a stable, happy home.

When Katsurō lost his father, things began to crumble the façade the Sakaguchi’s had created. Money had gotten tighter and tighter, as the family’s patriarch it was Katsurō’s responsibility to make it work. He couldn’t. The night before he left town Akari was the last person to see him. He promised her not to worry, that everything was going to be alright. It was a lie. A terrible fiction that dug into Akari’s heart. Everything seemed to fall apart in the subsequent months, as expected from a mother who now had the shame of a coward husband and was now forced to hold two jobs. It drove her straight into a bottle of saki nearly every night. Even with help from Komako’s young brother things never seemed to adjust correctly. Akari supposes that’s why the town is said to be cursed. The perception going forward for years was Akari dipped into her hobbies. It was more than that. She started hating everyone she saw, her bright disposition turning dour and pessimistic. She grew distant from her childhood friends and found herself doing whatever she could to not be at home.

Going into high school she contemplates often and has had another growth spurt, she knows it’s the time to start preparing for the future but why should she care what the future could bring? She doesn’t have any.

What Are You Listening To?

What Are You Listening To?

Pariah Online: A Voyage into the Intangible Aether

Location: The Laughing Worg Tavern -- The City-State of Thorinn, Aetheria

---

Rael sighed, “Yeah, sure, I guess.”

Not everybody’s you. The words cut like a knife, even if it wasn’t the intention. Rael, or rather Hanako’s own mind worked against her. Not every person in Pariah was a sociopathic monster with no friends. Not everyone was happy to be here. Not afraid. Not broken. It was a thought she kept coming back to, and it was hard to combat it. She had no friends, even if they called her one at the table, and sometimes made her felt needed.

Rael took a drink of some watered down wine, listening to others engage with the conversation. The noise in her head didn’t help, but she didn’t act like she was shut down or hurt by it.

“Maybe, people just need to realize the situation they are in. I dunno. Your idea about changing vocation is something, though. Pretty smart, if people want to hire wayfarers for denizen work.”

Pariah Online: A Voyage into the Intangible Aether

Location: The Laughing Worg Tavern -- The City-State of Thorinn, Aetheria

---

Rael was tempted to snarl back at Graves when he accused her of listening to him wrong. Like words was his strong suit.

Fortunately, Graves had diverted to a more sensible argument. About how the denizens weren’t giving them anything, how they had leverage. How they needed to convince other guilds to get back in the field, which was largely going to be her next point. The argument still didn’t make sense even if it was more sensible, however. How did they have any leverage when the majority of guilds, single individuals, and normal groups of wayfarers weren’t doing anything.

“If you want to use leverage like a fuckin’ yakuza, you need to have more leverage than ‘we can do this thing others can’t’.” She explained, albeit heated.

“If eighty percent of people aren’t stopping dungeons or being productive and helping that ecosystem then they are parasites. That’s how society views people. Like,” She held her hands out, pointing out the few wayfarers she had seen in the tavern, people who didn’t have reputations for doing anything. “how many people here have we seen actually do anything? One group went to that dungeon in the western marshlands. One. Two groups fell into the rat dungeon, which means only two groups were bothering cleaning out the sewers in the first place. Answer me this, tank-for-brains, how many wayfarers are in Thorinn, do you think? What kind of leverage do they have?”

Pariah Online: A Voyage into the Intangible Aether

Location: The Laughing Worg Tavern -- The City-State of Thorinn, Aetheria

---

“I agree with Kazuki.” Rael stated as she leaned back in her chair casually as she tossed the apple she had been eating into a garbage can a few feet away.

Maybe it was the shared, practical Japanese way of thinking Rael, Benkei, and Kazuki had. Maybe it was just common sense to someone who was always about surviving in the game while pissing others off. Rael just knew that if wayfarers stood up to denizens the only thing that would happen would be double the graves. Thorinn wouldn’t even exist if they didn’t solve dungeons, but the denizens like the Queen gave them their patronage. It was what the dumb NPCs had said before.

“We’re in a shared ecosystem. That’s how they were describing it a few days ago, right?” Her eyes moved across the table before resting on Graves. “If we don’t seal dungeons, the cities get overran. If the cities get overran we have nowhere to rely on for safety and well, amenities. If we start a riot the only one you’re hurting is you. If you actually used your brain you’d see its really the only choice we have.”

Location: The Laughing Worg Tavern, The City-State of Thorinn, Aetheria

---

Alja’s guilt and sorrow didn’t get lost on Dariel.

He remembered the fear, though while he couldn’t relate to always thinking it’d be a cakewalk there had been other denizens who had thought so. Ones who thought it was just a fun adventure, hence the name, but were sadly mistaken. Kids whose bodies were buried. Some of them people he personally knew from his time in the village he grew up in. It was a dangerous vocation and it reminded people of it at the worst times, no matter if they were born in Aetheria or in the weird places wayfarers had mentioned. With the anxiety of not even being able to go home, plus the reality of the dangers of Aetheria finally rearing their head there was no reason Dariel couldn’t be sympathetic to their plight. He didn’t need to relate to it to understand it, after all.

The older man swerved a flagon of orange juice to the girl, nodding at what she had told him before he spoke again.

“Look kid, you didn’t fail anyone. Ain’t your fault you can’t go home or that you’re the only ones who seem to have this ability to fix dungeons. The gods gave you a bad set of dice. Best you can do is handle it as best as you can. You don’t have to weather the storm broken and alone.”

What Are You Listening To?

Gamblers of Vox Fortuna

Maeve

Personnel Dossier

---

_Name

Maeve Puckett

_Age

27

_{Physical Evaluation}

Standing at five-foot-seven with pink hair and cerulean eyes, Maeve would be a looker if not for her unkempt appearance and loose-fitting attire. She’s been fighting and jury-rigging tech her whole life and her lack of empathy toward others comes through in her constant lack of facial expressiveness beyond a scowl or frown. She hasn’t smiled in over fifteen years and it shows.

_{Psychological Profile}

Cold
Fair
Honest
Impulsive
Lawful
Temperamental
Ruthless
Violent

_{Background Information}

The three major factions represent at least seventy percent of the planets in the greater galaxy. Where Maeve grew up they never factored in. The Sol Union’s rivalry with the Thedes Empire or its distrust with the North Star League were things you heard about on Luon Prime from people who wanted to start a new leaf, break new bread, and just get away from intergalactic geo-politics. After all, Luon Prime was basically a nowhere planet, formed by the kind of people who wanted to play by their own rules and feign responsibility.

But where the greatest freedom came, so too did the greatest trials. Snake Bigby ran his planet tightly and where freedom came so too did trouble. Brigands and slavers, marauders and thieves, hustlers and enroachers; you name the type of problem and they came to Luon Prime eventually. Maeve’s father was one such person, though the details were murky and Maeve didn’t ask much. All she knew is that her father came for a second chance and before she was born became one of the more successful tin stars on the planet. Maeve’s mother was an engineer, a mechanic. Born on Luon and committed to never leaving Luon, and it was through her that Maeve was taught everything from tuning a good firearm to using a toolkit on a frame to make sure it could sputter through the next fight.

There were constant worries growing up. Her parents protected the sector five line on the planet from bad people and worse creatures. It was only ironic that her father was shot and killed in front of her, at dinner, when she was fourteen-years-old rather than in the field doing his job as a man of law. Maeve can’t even recall much of it. ‘cept the man she tracked down for years after-the-fact that did the deed.

In a normal world she would’ve followed in her father’s footsteps, stayed on Luon after she buried the man that ruined her life. But she couldn’t stomach it. Somehow she moved on and found herself a member of a crew. Gamblers of Vox Fortuna. Some of them had helped her track down who she was looking for and she owed favors and she found comforting to do something with some passive idea of purpose. This was four years—four galactic cycles—ago. She still is amongst gamblers. Might be a gambler until she’s in the ground like her father is.

Exoframe

---

_Designation

Lone Star

_{Weight Class}

Heavy

_Description

Obadiah Puckett, Maeve’s paternal grandfather, was the first one to fly the Lone Star. A heavy bipedal maiden standing at about 35.6 feet willing to dish out as much damage as it can take, it has served in countless conflicts from well before Andrew Puckett arrived on Luon Prime and married an engineer who knew how to patch up two generations of damage and retrofitted outdated power capacitors with better ones. It is a exoframe meant to be a damage dealer with various slots for exterior back-mounted armaments. The armor is thick, though it is one of the slower and less versatile exoframes based on some of Maeve’s contemporaries among her fellow gamblers.

_{Equipment and Armament}

The Lone Star, as described, is about dealing damage and taking damage. It may be exactly why Maeve survived the battle with her lifelong enemy and came out on top, but a lot of the bruising the Lone Star took in a fight that it was outgunned and outnumbered still remain. The power capacitors need upgrades, the armor is in imperfect shape, and the radar system works imperfectly. But Maeve has little money to her name and is in dire need of a credit line. The systems that work efficiently can be surmised below.

• Twin-Mounted ExoStarr™ Light Guns: The twin light machineguns that sit underneath the maw of the pilot’s cabin are the first line of offense for the Lone Star. Plasma-infused shells spin at a fast rate to cause integral armor damage to Maeve’s enemies.

• SCORPIO™ Heavy Rockets: Largely out-paced by the competing Hornet Hunter Seeker Missles, Mbraxo’s stronghold over explosive processing centers on several planets allows them to produce more of them even if they aren’t as efficient. A good pilot can upgrade the targeting system, anyway, right? It’s a constant thought for Maeve, but Mbraxo rockets are cheap and plentiful and they get the job done.

• Heavy Armor Plating (50% INTEGRITY): It needs a new sheet of metal, but the Lone Star’s armor is one of the benefits of its model and the modifications made through three generations of pilots. Nobody has killed a pilot while they are in the machine yet.

• Silverstar Light Rail Gun (OUT OF ORDER): Technically inoperable due to a lack of maintenance and power routing, the Silverstar Light Rail Gun is almost two generations old and the last time the Lone Star used it in a fight Maeve wouldn’t even born for another twelve years. She’s thought about updating it and repairing it, but railguns are as expensive as they are powerful.

Gamblers of Vox Fortuna

Maeve

Personnel Dossier

---

_Name

Maeve Puckett

_Age

27

_{Physical Evaluation}

Standing at five-foot-seven with pink hair and cerulean eyes, Maeve would be a looker if not for her unkempt appearance and loose-fitting attire. She’s been fighting and jury-rigging tech her whole life and her lack of empathy toward others comes through in her constant lack of facial expressiveness beyond a scowl or frown. She hasn’t smiled in over fifteen years and it shows.

_{Psychological Profile}

Cold
Fair
Honest
Impulsive
Lawful
Temperamental
Ruthless
Violent

_{Background Information}

The three major factions represent at least seventy percent of the planets in the greater galaxy. Where Maeve grew up they never factored in. The Sol Union’s rivalry with the Thedes Empire or its distrust with the North Star League were things you heard about on Luon Prime from people who wanted to start a new leaf, break new bread, and just get away from intergalactic geo-politics. After all, Luon Prime was basically a nowhere planet, formed by the kind of people who wanted to play by their own rules and feign responsibility.

But where the greatest freedom came, so too did the greatest trials. Snake Bigby ran his planet tightly and where freedom came so too did trouble. Brigands and slavers, marauders and thieves, hustlers and enroachers; you name the type of problem and they came to Luon Prime eventually. Maeve’s father was one such person, though the details were murky and Maeve didn’t ask much. All she knew is that her father came for a second chance and before she was born became one of the more successful tin stars on the planet. Maeve’s mother was an engineer, a mechanic. Born on Luon and committed to never leaving Luon, and it was through her that Maeve was taught everything from tuning a good firearm to using a toolkit on a frame to make sure it could sputter through the next fight.

There were constant worries growing up. Her parents protected the sector five line on the planet from bad people and worse creatures. It was only ironic that her father was shot and killed in front of her, at dinner, when she was fourteen-years-old rather than in the field doing his job as a man of law. Maeve can’t even recall much of it. ‘cept the man she tracked down for years after-the-fact that did the deed.

In a normal world she would’ve followed in her father’s footsteps, stayed on Luon after she buried the man that ruined her life. But she couldn’t stomach it. Somehow she moved on and found herself a member of a crew. Gamblers of Vox Fortuna. Some of them had helped her track down who she was looking for and she owed favors and she found comforting to do something with some passive idea of purpose. This was four years—four galactic cycles—ago. She still is amongst gamblers. Might be a gambler until she’s in the ground like her father is.

Exoframe

---

_Designation

Lone Star

_{Weight Class}

Heavy

_Description

Obadiah Puckett, Maeve’s paternal grandfather, was the first one to fly the Lone Star. A heavy bipedal maiden standing at about 35.6 feet willing to dish out as much damage as it can take, it has served in countless conflicts from well before Andrew Puckett arrived on Luon Prime and married an engineer who knew how to patch up two generations of damage and retrofitted outdated power capacitors with better ones. It is a exoframe meant to be a damage dealer with various slots for exterior back-mounted armaments. The armor is thick, though it is one of the slower and less versatile exoframes based on some of Maeve’s contemporaries among her fellow gamblers.

_{Equipment and Armament}

The Lone Star, as described, is about dealing damage and taking damage. It may be exactly why Maeve survived the battle with her lifelong enemy and came out on top, but a lot of the bruising the Lone Star took in a fight that it was outgunned and outnumbered still remain. The power capacitors need upgrades, the armor is in imperfect shape, and the radar system works imperfectly. But Maeve has little money to her name and is in dire need of a credit line. The systems that work efficiently can be surmised below.

• Twin-Mounted ExoStarr™ Light Guns: The twin light machineguns that sit underneath the maw of the pilot’s cabin are the first line of offense for the Lone Star. Plasma-infused shells spin at a fast rate to cause integral armor damage to Maeve’s enemies.

• SCORPIO™ Heavy Rockets: Largely out-paced by the competing Hornet Hunter Seeker Missles, Mbraxo’s stronghold over explosive processing centers on several planets allows them to produce more of them even if they aren’t as efficient. A good pilot can upgrade the targeting system, anyway, right? It’s a constant thought for Maeve, but Mbraxo rockets are cheap and plentiful and they get the job done.

• Heavy Armor Plating (50% INTEGRITY): It needs a new sheet of metal, but the Lone Star’s armor is one of the benefits of its model and the modifications made through three generations of pilots. Nobody has killed a pilot while they are in the machine yet.

• Silverstar Light Rail Gun (OUT OF ORDER): Technically inoperable due to a lack of maintenance and power routing, the Silverstar Light Rail Gun is almost two generations old and the last time the Lone Star used it in a fight Maeve wouldn’t even born for another twelve years. She’s thought about updating it and repairing it, but railguns are as expensive as they are powerful.

@TGM

Maeve is also done.