Muttonhawk

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

Lunise's angled eyes narrowed and she half-pouted in confusion as Meesei explained. "You ask as if it would surprise me? Meesei, I would be outright sceptical." Her tired eyes blinked a few times. "You are full of surprises, particularly magical talent, but such magic has been lost to history. Short of reading an elder scroll, walking Apocrypha, or...some kind of divine intervention, learning such a thing is impossible. I could not believe it without witnessing it."

Lunise looked away with her upper lip raised. "Besides, even if you did..." She paused. Her eyes blinked to look into Meesei's for a few seconds.

The discomfort overtook her. After all this time, Lunise finally slid her arms back from around Meesei's shoulders and took a step back. She avoided Meesei's eye contact. "No, cast that action from your mind." She turned and packed up the documents while she spoke. "Disappearing away to Alinor, or anywhere else right now, would be unwise. There is business yet to be done here."

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

I bought that product. It didn't help my writing at all, it just made me a kick-ass basketball player. 3/10

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

Fair enough, but it still stands that Lunise probably wouldn't have on-hand access to any of them.

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

Bloody hell - guys. This would be fascinating to explore ICly:

In Marckx v Belgium, 'Ms. Paula Marckx, being unmarried, gave birth to a daughter in 1973. Under Belgian law, no legal bond between an unmarried mother and her child resulted from the mere fact of birth. To create the bond, the mother had either to recognise maternity in specific proceedings or to adopt the child. In both cases, the child's inheritance rights remained less than those a child born in marriage received automatically.'

Woah. Might do it myself if no one has by the time I'm free.

@Kho

Belvast: "Belruarc! I demand you lend me some strength!"

Belru: "Soz son, I'm Belgian. Don't owe you shit."

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

Just to be clear, Lunise and Marod haven't been shown or told about the propylon network by Meesei, have they?

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

"It's crossed my mind," Janius said to Julan's first line of questions. "However, if they are cooping Aurana up, I can't guarantee that they would have changed for the better."

Julan's suggestion made Janius raise his eyebrows. He looked to one side in thought and ended his pause in a low hum. "That's a thought. That's a good thought." He sighed and closed his eyes. "It's been a long day. Hold that and we'll think of something in the morning, come."

Janius turned a palm out at his side, gesturing towards the barracks. He turned on his foot to walk with Julan back to their quarters.

---

Lunise responded first to Meesei's beliefs half-heartedly, as if doing so for the sake of it. "If your religion was the real reason for someone like me disturbing the peace, you would have worked that out by now. Talos worship would have drawn that sort of trouble from me. Before today, at least. Before..." She trailed off.

At this point, Lunise sniffed back and found her nose clearing. Her tears were beginning to dry stiffly on her face. Short of readjusting her hair and wiping her eyes, she was all but recomposed.

"I last set foot in Alinor, I think...forty-three years ago." Contrary to Meesei's vagueness of method, Lunise did not appear confused. "If I were to go," she said, looking over Meesei's head. "I do not think I would be able to relax. Being that close to those that would probably want me dead if they found out, no." She took a quick breath. "But I would see father again. I would like to visit him and just...without telling him about all this, enjoy some time in his company. While I will still be able to."

Lunise shook her head. "Not that I'll be able to get there is such a short time, of course. My magic would not send me halfway across Tamriel and over to the south-west over the night by any stretch of the imagination."

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

Janius shrugged. "That all depends on what we decide to do and how it turns out. My mother and father are stubborn. At least as stubborn, if not more, than you and me. Simply going up to them and asking them to give Aurana some independence might just end up making them wall up and stand their ground. Even if we reason with them, they are unlikely to shift because of how emotional they might be about it." Janius lowered his eyes and chewed on the inside of his cheek. "It's an immature mindset. It's really why we didn't get along in the first place."

With a transitioning breath, Janius turned up to Julan again. "Anyway, we might find a way to give Aurana some advice on how to stand up for herself, or try and contrive some other way for mother and father to be convinced that what they're doing is wrong. It will take a bit of planning."

---

"Fortunate, hmph." Lunise said dryly through a frown. "Hircine has never been a highly regarded figure except in your communities. Still, to have something like that guide you through your life must be comforting. Your purpose is laid out for you. You gathered a close family from the world over, by the sound of it." She swallowed. "I never was particularly religious. Perhaps the priests had more wisdom than I gave them credit for."

Lunise hazarded another skerrick of eye contact. "What of your own tribe in Black Marsh?"

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

"No, no," Janius assured. He called over to the others where they were still moving to the barracks. "I'll catch up with you in a minute."

He didn't take him far. Just to one side of the courtyard away from the immediate ears of any patrolling guards. Janius looked down on his son with a hand on his hip. "Now, Julan, I have an admission. If you hadn't noticed..." He leaned down slightly and lowered his voice. "I'm terrified to meet my mother and father again. You see, my relationship with them was not the same as yours with Kaleeth and me. Neither is it like Rhazii and his parents. For a while in the mess room, I was considering putting off helping Aurana -- a sister I had never met and should have been more excited to find out about. Putting it off for who-knows-when." He stood up straight again. "But you stood up for her. You helped me realise that I should be helping her like anyone in my family. And regardless of your jaunt with Rhazii this evening, I'm proud that you stood up for your family. Now come here."

Janius stepped forward and gave Julan a warm hug, patting his back.

---

Meesei's move to pull away was not met with resistance by Lunise, though her still red eyes danced around Meesei's outline as if ambivalent about the intimacy. Still, her arms remained around Meesei.

"My mother and father are both academics. Mother studies the arcane, while father studies life. Plants, animals, people, and such. He was a hard man. Mother taught me most of what I know about magic, but she joined the Psijic Order when I was sixteen years old. She visited often. I haven't seen her since Artaeum disappeared. Sparse trips back to Alinor allow me to visit father, though only every few decades." Lunise's eyes finally settled on looking at the end of Meesei's snout. "My friends are few or far flung. There are those I have not spoken to in a century simply by going down different paths. Those that I have still kept contact with are in Rimmen. Some Thalmor colleagues, Ren, Dauluga, Yasasha. Altmer. Not the humblest company, but respectful of competence. We all worked together to keep the region stable. There's A Khajiiti tavern keeper, Tivi, that has listened to some of my problems where state secrets are not involved. The officers of a Khajiiti militia that I trained, Saucra and Tejizka. They were invaluable in connecting with the Anequinan culture. I have spoken to few since I began searching for and liaising with you outside of Elsweyr. I suppose that makes my only other friend Marod, if our bickering respect could be called friendship. We shall never let each other hear it, but there are times where we defer to an unspoken trust between us."

Finally, Lunise made eye contact with Meesei. Her eyes turned up with an almost threatening leer. "If you speak to Marod of anything that has or will go on in this room, I will personally snap off your horns and drive them through your tongue."

Lunise did not hold onto the threat for long. Her eyes returned to Meesei's snout. "At any rate, if it is not rude to ask, perhaps you could tell me how you came to assemble your pack? I understand that a lycan's family is its pack. It has been curious to watch you all interact. I also wonder if you ever see your own blood family during all this."

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

Janius had expected that the uncertainty he put forward would be reflected back at him. Regardless, he put on a small smile and stood up. Regardless of what they did, he did not want to deny Aurana the rest of her night out, nor did he want to abruptly separate her from Julan and Rhazii. Janius was glad to see them getting along.

When Janius turned around, he spotted Fendros and Ahnasha's beverages and knew exactly what his move was.

And onward the night went. Janius ended up allowing for another hour and a half in the end, but they eventually had to say their goodbyes. Even one night with Rhazii and Julan had Aurana in tears when she had to hug them goodbye. She kept saying that she would see them again, but there was something in her voice that knew that it could be a long time before then.

Jatinha was somewhat emotional, though not to Aurana's level. She had relaxed considerably since sitting closer to the group. When they were walking back to the Aetius manor, she and Rhazii were trailing behind. Despite speaking quietly, any sharp ears could hear a nervous admission of admiration by Rhazii. Jatinha thanked him and held his hand, but a goodbye hug was all else that came of it.

The walk back to the castle was solemn and almost wordless. However, Janius took aside Julan at the gate. "C'mere, Newt," Janius said. He only used his child name as a casual nickname these days. "I want to talk to you."

---

"I had heard as much about you incidentally, champion. Meesei." Lunise was still somewhat stilted. "It explains your background. Back then, I must have been...oh, in the Dominion army, if I were to guess your age?"

Lunise hesitated with a thought. "Where I am from and where my home is has diverged. And the army is not my complete background. I was born in Alinor, the city, in year two of this fourth era. I grew up with the isles being pieced back together by the Thalmor, and I was there helping them. At least, where I could between my education. Most of my nights were practice and writing. Scholarly pursuits. I was always more attached to action, however, and eschewed it after a while. I joined government work, for quite some time, growing the Dominion under my superiors. I was there penning agreements at the behest of the officials that spoke with the Mane as they took Pelletine and Anequina into the Dominion. I stayed there in a governing capacity. About sixty years later, I joined the war effort against the Empire as a battlemage. Then I returned to Anequina, to oversee the region alongside a number of other justicars. We watched the border and built the communities. And then you wandered through the desert with a clan's worth of lycanthropes under my nose. Now I am here. That, I can say, is where I come from. I have been away from Alinor for so long that Rimmen is more a home to me than Alinor. Then again, I have been away from Rimmen for some time as well."

It was clearly a shortened version of Lunise's life, though the way she contracted some portions hinted at what she preferred to look back on. More telling was the point in time where she grew up. The beliefs that had been shattered in front of Meesei's life were formative from her youth. By her account, she had grown alongside the Aldmeri Dominion.

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

I'm making an RPGMaker2003 game. Does anyone have any good idea for sound tracks to listen to while I'm making it?

@ActRaiserTheReturned

For lack of knowing your musical tastes, here's a candidate.