Mokley

A Cold Wind Blows...

Absolutely brilliant! I'm here, and I've got an unwritten post in my head that may yet have to wait til tomorrow. Today's been a day. I can, however, share ice cream!

Ragtag: Steampunk treasure hunting.

The pleasant smile on Simnia's face grew strained. Not that important? The engines of an airship would be left to one man? The captain was only now seeing the ship for the first time? Some form of job security? Find some other kind of work? Her mouth twitched, and she struggled to remain pleasant. Work comes before the slave! Every illiterate mongrel child understood this concept. And if an engineer had told her before a long haul that he'd never set eyes on a train engine before, she'd throw herself off a cliff and save him the trouble. She had a vision of that ship falling into the mountains in a ball of white fire, and she forced herself calm.

"Well. I'm sure if Dariq were open to having an assistant --" There was a commotion, and someone bellowing in an altogether inconsiderate tone, and Simnia turned to give the raucous dwarf the stink eye, because how dare he interrupt people when they were in the middle of negotiating important business! But much to her frustration the captain rose to meet his heckler, thus abandoning what might have been one of the first productive conversations of Simnia's life.

But what followed was a tumult of disaster.

There was shouting. There were demands. A blade flashed in the sunlight. A shot rang out like thunder and Simnia squeaked like a kitten as loosened brain matter glistened in the spaces in the crowd. Instinctively she spun around, scanning the ship for the source of the shot, wondering whether it was aimed at her head next, while a roar and thrash went to war all around her.

Where was the little human?

"Anisa!" Simnia breathed hurriedly, and she slapped her signed contract on the table, and dodged Aria's blade, and jumped when a rifle shot whizzed by her ear, and she may or may not have stepped on someone's tail, and everything smelled coppery and musky like blood and new sweat, and her ears rang and her mouth was dry, and she hopped over the bodies and muttered obscenities to herself, and her eyes were wide and worried while she scanned the slashing and murdering. In the corner of her eye, tethering lines were flying severed in the wind. The ship was turning, the gangplank precarious. Someone moved behind the remains of her old faithful apricot crate, and she never thought she would be so happy to see it.

"Elani!" Simnia stopped short of having her nose cut off by an enthusiastic sword, and she sprinted into the corner and extended a hand. "The ship's about to move, we have to go. Has Anisa gone, have you seen her?" She never should have taken her eyes off the girl.

Ragtag: Steampunk treasure hunting.

Conflict! Excellent!

Hey Northern, I get the feeling that there's a divide among the players about where our characters are, exactly. Some posts assume we're on the dock, others assume we're actually on the ship. I point this out because it seems Daliq is untying the ship. So we'll make a run for it, then? ;)

Edit: Deth, I've read your post again and I might have interpreted it wrong, sorry. Is the ship being untied, or is he thinking about it?

Ragtag: Steampunk treasure hunting.

Yes, yes she did. It was either that or rip a huge hole across it. Pens are awful things.

Ragtag: Steampunk treasure hunting.

Simnia had been peering hard at the elf, determined to hear and to understand every word despite the noisy jabber all around and the ever-present problem that was the distance between their heights -- but then, Anisa's quiet voice reached her clearly, and the dwarf grinned brightly upon her. There was a swell of appreciation in Simnia's heart that this little human did not appear to be condescending to a lowly dwarf, as most other humans tended to be.

"A pleasure to meet you, Miss Anisa," she said with a respectful bow of her head, as she had done all her life when meeting a human, and it never occurred to her to do any differently. "My name is Simnia, and I'm a Free Dwarf." She took great pleasure in saying those two words. They made her feel a bit giddy. But she had noticed how much fear was reflected in Anisa's eyes, and she tipped her head and patted the girl's shoulder in worry, leaving a trace of apricot smell on her sleeve. "Are you all right, dear? You look pale."

She was distracted by the flash of a wad of papers being waved in her face, and with a dazed stare Simnia took them, and she squinted with a befuddled expression at all the silly markings all over the page. Her new elven friend was kind enough to translate, though, and it was enough for Simnia to know that there was a way open to her to board that ship and get out of this awful thieving place for good -- treasure hunt or no treasure hunt, none of it made any difference to her.

"Well I don't know about any cesspool bureausy," she huffed in response to the elf's explanation, "but a ship's a ship, and I think I'd like to be on it regardless, if this paper here means that much," she said to both Anisa and the kind elf, but she was still a bit unsure when she asked the elf, "could I possibly borrow that pen?" When she had it, she fumbled with it, and wrapped her fingers awkwardly around it and poked a hole through the page in her attempt to make a mark on the line. She muttered under her breath, poked a few more holes, made a splotch of ink, and finally dipped her finger in the splotch and spread it around in a thick scribble, and that was good enough for a signature she didn't have.

Having returned the pen to the elf, Simnia pushed her way to the table and paused uncertainly, giving the well-dressed human there a scrutinizing and suspicious look before she spoke. "Excuse me very much, good sir," she said in a hard voice raised to be heard over the chatter, "pardon me, but what sort of work and quarters, exactly, might or might not be available aboard your ship for a Free Dwarf? I have been a mechanic at the lowland rail lines," she added quickly, "I know my way around the machines, if you've got any, Sir, and my name is Simnia." She wouldn't escape slavery only to be condemned to slavery aboard a ship -- and she worried that her new elf friend and the pretty Anisa may have just signed their freedom away, too. She clutched the holey, splotched contract as if it were the very freedom she had only so recently won, and she watched Maithien with a steady and fiery determination.

Ragtag: Steampunk treasure hunting.

I'd say that it works for your character though, Starcatcher -- she seems pretty introverted, so you could say she truly didn't notice. I hope I didn't come across wrong, I only meant to relieve any awkwardness. It happens to all of us.

Simnia's probably going to have a great interest in Anisa, since they're almost the same height and Simnia has a soft spot for quiet ones. I could see my character watching out for yours quite a lot, if that's cool with you.

Also darkwolf, there'll be a sneezing fit every time Ren is nearby. In case you wanted to take advantage of that. ;)

edit: Bahahaha! The apricots have been sacrificed! It was for a good cause.

Ragtag: Steampunk treasure hunting.

I got you covered, juju!

Also, long post is long. Anyone who's impatient can skip to the last two paragraphs, which are the only truly relevant ones. Anisa and Elani are mentioned.

Ragtag: Steampunk treasure hunting.

Apricots! Oh, Simnia would never eat another apricot again. She would smell of apricots for months. People would begin to know her by her stench, they would call her Apricot, and she would become a cruel and hateful old dwarf and burn the apricot fields to extinction.

The facts were these: In a brilliant touch of dwarven insight, while governing the boxcars of a moving supply train, Simnia had pried open a crate of apricots and had dumped the pretentious little fruits out of the boxcar door. She had watched them sail like yellow stones over the edge of the rail bridge and into the ravine far below. Thus satisfied, she had squished herself into the apricot-less crate and had pulled the lid down on top. Only after she had sealed herself inside did she realize that a reeking stench of apricots was sealed in with her. Eventually the train had stopped, and she felt the bump and sway of her crate being picked up and transported, and then the weightless sway of the net that drew her higher and higher toward the floating city of Riviqin. She couldn't see any of this, of course, because she was stuck in a crate, but Simnia had watched it happen to hundreds of crates before her. From this moment she would be free of slavers and shackles. She would, for the first time in her life, have the chance to live.

Simnia waited, silent and patient inside her crate, until everything had stopped moving and the noises of people had faded into the distance. When she thought the coast was clear, she shuffled around inside the box until she got a good foothold, and pushed with all her might. With a sudden CRACK the crate splintered and toppled apart entirely, leaving the dwarf sitting surprised and sooty and stinking like apricots, with nowhere to hide and no clue where she was.

It seemed, after some observation, that her escape crate had been delivered to the supply dock of an outbound ship, which she inferred by the fact that she was now sitting on a dock and there was a ship being loaded in front of her. There was a curious brilliant banner strung up on it, but seeing as she couldn't read she paid it no attention, and she instead crawled to her feet and sniffed her sooty dress with a puckered face. Apricots! But she'd barely had time to register the fact that she was free before she noticed there was some commotion nearby. Human commotion. Excited commotion, laced with more than a bit of confusion, as like strangers about to embark on a vacation into the unknown. The very thought of the word embark sent a pleasant chill through Simnia's veins. Away! Freedom! She could enlist onto a ship and would never be found again!

She puffed her chest, lifted her chin, and strode up to the group as if she had been free all along, never a slave at all but one of them, a Free Dwarf, an aristocrat, perhaps, who had fallen into some soot and apricot juice on her way -- and she looked proud and brave, though inside she shook like a leaf, certain that all that awaited her were chains, anywhere she turned. As long as she didn't act like a slave they couldn't call her one, right?

She paused at the sight of one of those ratty cat-people people that always made her sneeze, and she crept around the other side of the group -- the grizzled tall elf (she had to look twice at his ears, because indeed she'd never seen an elf like that), the blonde and the redhead (who both seemed to be pleasant if improper young ladies), and a chestnut-haired young woman who was almost as small as Simnia herself, which she took to be an encouraging sign. Surely, a human as short as this could understand at least a modicum of the dwarven dilemma.

There was a second elf -- much fairer to look at than the first -- leaning over the littlest lady and asking questions that the poor shy girl was apparently too frightened to answer. Full of pity for Anisa, Simnia made her way over to rescue her from undesired attention, and she waved a hand over her head to gain Elani's attention. Simnia was always more comfortable with elves before humans, and she thought she was a good judge of character with this one. She saw a trustworthy soul, and one that might not be quick to send her back to the stocks.

"I'm of your opinion, friend," she said gently to Elani, forcing a more polite voice than the one she usually used at the trainyard. "It's a curious mix, clamoring for those papers. I'm sorry to ask a favor, but can you read by chance? I'd like to know what that banner and those papers say, out of curiosity. I thought I heard someone say sailing off."

A Cold Wind Blows...

Heeyy I'm out for a day and return to a bunch of delicious characters! Numerica, absolutely brilliant -- I'll try to relate everything in mine. Also, it seems everyone's using photographs -- allow me to be the odd one out!

This turned out to be terribly long, but I wanted to include some info that might be beneficial to you, Numerica, regarding Tjasa's grandparents, etc. I tried and failed to shorten it.

Name: Chiudka Gusakov
Age: 31
Appearance:

Chiudka

Occupation: Healer, Babysitter, Storyteller, Liar -- but mostly she tends the house, the cabbage and the chickens

History and other things:
Chiudka is no longer the shy and restrained romantic she had been before her sister died. Bronislava had been the prettier one, the smarter one, the funnier one, the popular one. She had had a doting husband and a beautiful child, and was everything their parents had ever wanted in a daughter and everything every man had ever wanted in a wife. They had clamored at the door, written terrible sonnets and sung even worse; they only ever gave Chiudka flowers when they asked her to deliver them to their precious Bronislava. Chiudka had alternated between idolizing her sister and despising her -- until finally, Chiudka had directed so much quiet, jealous hatred toward Bronislava that the beloved wife and daughter had fallen ill and died. Chiudka has confessed this to no one but the priest of the White God, but is convinced of her guilt.

It was out of guilt, at first, that she took her motherless niece, Tjasa, under her wing, as if she were her own. The child reminded her of herself: quiet, distant and curious. It was that curiosity that Chiudka did her best to encourage: she showed Tjasa a few tricks of the healer's trade, which her own father didn't know she knew. She continued her sister's lessons in mending and cooking. She told stories about the old ways, the Witch, and the creatures that lived in the mountains. But mostly, she listened.

Her parents (Tjasa's grandparents) are Kisel and Gostiata. Kisel continues to be a great friend and trusted healer of most of the village, both human and animal, through his herbs and his surgical skill as well as his charms and prayers. Though he had never officially allowed Chiudka to learn the trade, she had from a young age taken it upon herself to learn it anyway. She has only rarely demonstrated this knowledge in public; she shouldn't know it, after all. Since Bronislava's death, Kisel has been less friendly and more dedicated to his work that ever before. Gostiata, his wife, has been forgetting things she has no business forgetting. Chiudka has been quietly picking up where her mother has begun to fail. Both Kisel and Gostiata dote upon Tjasa as if she is the sun and the moon, which Chiudka supports wholeheartedly.

Chiudka is known most of all for her habit of stories and lies. It is not done maliciously, nor does she have anything to hide -- but she speaks before she thinks, and she says things that aren't quite true or are exaggerated to a fantastic degree. She used to do this as a child when she wanted to grab attention from her sister, but it's stuck so deeply that she has learned to embrace it: she is a favorite among the children for her stories, her ridiculous answers to impossible questions, and her own childish love of adventure and whimsy. Of course, it also means she is not well-trusted among the adults, who second-guess almost everything that comes out of her mouth -- which is another reason she's hesitant to claim she has any skill beyond chasing chickens. She's afraid of being called a liar when she finally tells the truth.

Give me your characters! [Casual - Advanced]

Give me your character and I will build a world for her.
Right now I really miss being a moderator. I love latching onto small details and weaving them into greater and more elaborate plots. I love it when characters take a turn I didn't expect, and the plot gets redrawn from a different angle. What's different here, though, is that I will tailor settings, NPCs and plotlines to the character, never the other way around.

Please be aware that you'll probably have to abandon everything you thought you knew about the world your character lives in. As the moderator, I have to be deeply familiar with the setting: that's not possible if I feel like I'm trying to play out your concepts. The easiest way to ensure no one is left behind is the "Voyage and Return" basic plot. In other words, your character starts out normally enough, but through a series of choices finds himself in places and situations he never imagined.

I lean toward fantasy settings.
Personally, I'm happiest in a low-tech world with at least a potential for magic. Medieval and Steampunk are favorites, but the right character might convince me otherwise. Go crazy, or stay very subdued. Any culture, any landscape.

If you're interested, post a character here.
I can't guarantee that we'll end up rping together, so you may not want to put a whole lot of effort into it, but this part is important. Give me a concept of a character that you would LOVE to play -- and I mean absolutely LOVE -- and tell me why you love her. If I love him too, we might have an amazing story to write together.

I'd also be up for modding up to two players in the same thread. If by some miracle more than one person posts here, feel free to poke each other too.

Some ground rules:

No romance. If romance develops naturally in the story, great! But let's go in with the assumption that it's never gonna happen.

No superpowers. Your fireballs and your badass weapons are fun and cool, but please leave them at the door. Please remember: the more talented the character, the harder it is to challenge him. Also be aware that my plots rarely involve combat.

No angst. Angst is fun in moderation, but consistently miserable characters and miserable plotlines make me cranky.

No monologues. Writing for the sake of upping your paragraph count, while impressive, is useless to the plot. I'd rather have one meaningful paragraph than ten pages of flowery meaninglessness. Two to four paragraphs is the sweet spot, though if you're truly inspired please do write longer.

No compromises. If you're not entirely happy with my style or my preferences, or you discover a few posts in that you hate the rp, say something. Realize that I will do the same. It's not fair to either of us if one of us isn't into it.

And finally!
Now that I've strutted about and boasted of magic worldbuilding powers, I'm not as sure of myself as all that. I ask a lot of questions -- an annoyingly long list of questions -- and I hope you don't mind being asked!