Penny

Fortune & Glory: Grimdark Pulp RP

They slogged on through the not quite daylight. The landscape drew increasingly parched and cracked, as though they had ventured onto a vast lakebed that had not know water in hundreds of years. Some places the fissures were feet wide and crusted with rock salt. Here and there a low hill rose, rocky and desolate save for a few scrubby bushes that clung to their summits. One of these hills appeared to support a large tree with great black leaves but as the drew closer a grislier reality was revealed. Vultures swirled around the tree, pecking at human corpses that hung from the gnarled branches. The birds scattered as Jocasta and Beren climbed the hill, fleeing with what last tasty morsels they could tear from their victims. The smell was awful even though the poor wretches couldn’t have been dead that long. Beren began to cut them down, though how he intended to bury them Jocasta couldn’t imagine. Her eyes followed the drag marks down onto the salt plain to where another swarm of vultures feasted. Jocasta raised her hand and spoke several words in one of the arcane languages she had learned at the university. The air Infront of her shimmered and contorted into a lens that brought the distant vultures into view.



“It was a caravan,” she said, the corpses of camels obvious through her spell. Various wares lay scattered about, mostly rolls of cloth, pots and iron tools.

“The Tar fiends work no doubt,” Beren observed sadly. Jocasta nodded absently, doing a few quick calculations in her head.

“They must have run across them on their way to the village,” she agreed. Jocasta felt a stab of guilt. All of this was her fault. If she hadn’t read the inscription these people would still be alive, peddling overpriced garments and trading pots for sweet smelling incense. She was only here at all because she had made a bargain with a demon and now destruction seemed to follow in her wake, even here where the demon’s influence was allegedly weaker. The alternative was Beren’s death but then she had never heard of a demonic bargain where the person striking it didn’t feel like they had a good reason. There was nothing to be done about it. All she could do was to try to mitigate the damage she had done by disturbing the Black Pharoh.

Finding out what he wanted with the artifact from the village temple was the first step. Orienting herself she sketched a line between the village and the ruin of the caravan in her mind. The land was flat and featureless, and the tar fiends had probably headed straight towards the village. She followed her imaginary line of march east, noting a discolored area on the horizon. With a twist of her wrist, she turned her makeshift telescope to look upon it, revealing a fissure that widened out into a canyon that curved like the blade of a sickle.



“What have we here?” she asked.



There was no way to sneak up on the canyon, the terrain in all directions being uniformly flat save for the occasional unhelpful hill. Nor, given the nature of the foe, was darkness likely to be any boon. It felt extremely unnatural simply to stride across the desert to the canyon rim, but they made a virtue of necessity. The canyon was wider than it had appeared from the hill, nearly fifty yards wide at its broadest point and nearly that deep.

“This has opened recently,” Beren said as he moped his hair out of his eyes in a gesture that Jocasta always found endearing.



“How do you know?” Jocasta asked, to her it looked as though the fissure might have stood this way for a thousand years.

“The stone told me,” Beren replied unhelpfully. They found a section where rockfall made the decent practicable and slipped down into the canyon. It was cool within and very quiet. The walls were high enough to occlude the sunlight above filling the chasm with gloomy shadows. Their was no doubt this was the lair of the tar fiends, their odd vinegar and sulfur stink hung in the air like a haze that seemed to cling to the skin. They crept along the floor of the canyon until they rounded a sharp bend.

Jocasta stifled a scream and leaped into Beren’s arms. He caught her and held her with one hand, keeping the other free for his staff. Infront of them were two vast figures, they were carved into the rock in startling detail. One of them was a vast tar fiend, kneeling and offering a kopesh to a humanoid figure in the garb of an ancient Pharoh, only instead of a face contained with the head dress the Pharoh seemed to possess a mass of twisting tentacles coiled and curved in a perversion of a leering skull. Curled and twisted hieroglyphs covered both statues like unwholesome tattoos. Between the two figures was a linteled archway above a tunnel carved into the sandstone. A metallic taste of fear curdled at the back of Jocasta’s throat. Almost instinctively she drew one of her sketchbooks and began to copy the inscriptions, making quick sketches of the statues, calming herself with the habitual action.

“I suppose we have to go inside?” she asked reluctantly.

Silver & Gold: A Warhammer Roleplay

The Gods it seemed had a sense of humor. Emmaline opened her mouth to say that she was just leaving and why didn’t they catch up later but the Jade pulled up a chair without waiting for approval. Jacynde was a striking woman, if not exactly a beautiful one, she claimed to be the daughter of a Cathayan princess, though Emmaline knew that her moon shaped face and canted eyes were the result of the dalliance of a Wissenland timber merchant and Araybian sailor. She was a moderate talent, though far more disciplined than Emmaline not that competition was fierce in that field. Jacynde was also a terrible gossip, which was really the characteristic that most concerned Emmaline at the moment.

“I was just…” Emmaline began.

“I heard that Master Blackwood accused you of stealing an artifact from the Jade College but was humiliated when he couldn’t find any proof,” Jas launched in, plucking a grape from Emmaline’s place and popping it into her mouth. It took Emmaline a moment to even remember what she was talking about, which was a testament to just how much had happened in the day or so.

“Oh you know how it is, anything happens and people blame Master Albrecht,” Emmaline replied airily, trying to find some way of tactfully sending the other mage on her way.

“Well he did make those mystical copies of those Rodal painting and try to pass them off as originals,” Jas pointed out.

“Yes but…”

“And didn’t he convince the Baron of Kelhoc to invest in that bogus salt mining operation?”

“He didn’t MAKE him…”

“Also he made those mirrors for the temple of Shyalla that let him scry into their dressing chambers?”

“No one ever proved..”

“And there were those rumors about him swindling the Grand…”

“Yes! My point is this is clearly an overreaction,” Emmaline cut in. Jascynde peered at her as she chewed her grape, arching an eyebrow at her vehemence.

“You and he aren’t…” Jascynde made a rude gesture with her fingers.

“Jas!” Emmaline objected, blushing slightly.

“Oh come on it is just us girls here,” Jas cajoled. Emmaline, very conscious of Malcador under the table, shook her head.

“Anyway… Blackwood was just rounding up the usual suspects I’m sure,” Emmaline assured her.

“Well Albrecht is over in the Executors office raising holy Heldenhammer about Blackwood accusing you and besmirching his ‘fine’ reputation. Emmaline snickered, doubtless her master had some plan to make a few Gelt of the situation and complain so violently that no one would dare accuse him of anything for months. It was typical of the scheming old wizard and Emmaline couldn’t help but be quietly impressed by his ruthless opportunism.

“What was it that was stolen?” Emmaline asked. Malcador stiffened, doubtlessly wondering what she was doing engaging in conversation while they were in such a compromising position. She squeezed his head slightly between her thighs to still him.

“A torc of some kind, rumor has it that it is from Albion, forged by Druids there during a solar eclipse that lasted an entire day,” Jas eagerly gossiped, she plucked another grape.

“As to what it does… well I don’t think anybody really knows,” she admitted.

“Well…” Emmaline began, then appeared to stop herself from speaking. Jas, an inveterate gossip, leaned in eagerly at the pregnant pause.

“It seems to me that if no one even knows what it does, and the first thing Blackwood does is try to pin its disappearance on someone everyone is already predisposed to mistrust…”

“Are you suggesting Blackwood stole the torc and is trying to pass the blame!?” Jas asked, almost breathless with the scandalous import of that accusation.

“Oh nothing of the sort, it just seems odd,” she confided. Jas nodded so eagerly she nearly gave herself a neck injury.

“Well it was good to see you Emma,” Jas declared, all but leaping from her seat in her eagerness to be off and gossiping. “I will see you around, and maybe run a brush through your hair, you look ridiculous,” she advised before scurrying out of the parlor.

“You can let me up now,” Malcador said from below the table.

“Well if I must,” Emmaline grinned, finally releasing her hold on him.

“We really must play around with that torc…”

The Namtar Cycle

Calliope controlled herself so well that only two ships in the harbor burst into flame and no one in the immediate line of sight was killed. Her clothing rippled slowly into her spiked winged armor and then back to her dress without her conscious notice. A woman carrying a water vase dropped her burden and fled at the sight but her panicked shouts were subsumed into a larger cry as eyes turned towards the rising columns of smoke rising from the harbor.

“Did you do that?” Beren asked suspiciously.

“Do what?” Calliope replied blandly. Beren held her gaze for a second more and then turned and headed up the terraced steps towards the palace.

The palace was a strange site to Calliope’s eyes. In her own time the only buildings on this scale had been temples, or the great ritual sites of her fellow sorcerers. Her own fastness had been larger than this, carved out of a plate of volcanic basalt by thousands of slaves, polished smooth by the hair of her enemies. She wondered what had happened to it and the other great ritual palaces of her own time. Were they infested by lesser wizards? Had they been destroyed. She hoped that she would soon be able to find out. The compulsion in her head to free her imprisoned master throbbed powerfully, warning her not to get too far side tracked from her arcane imperative. She focused on following Beren, allowing the new compulsion to soothe the old.

A trio of guards squatted in the courtyard, playing dice on a large mosaic floor that depicted a trio of ships sailing into the sunset. They straightened as Beren strode in between the two carved obelisks that marked the entryway. They snatched up halberds and took positions in front of a large door of polished brass. They relaxed as they judged that the travel-stained Beren was no threat.

“Begone peasant, the Lugnal’s kitchen distributes scraps only on high feast days,” the leader sneered before his eyes slid to Calliope.

“Or are you a pimp conveying merchandise to his Highness? That might be a different matter,” he leered. Beren seemed to flash into position between the guard and Calliope, perhaps naively believing that a merely physical barrier might prevent her from flaying the insolent brute where he stood.

“I am here to inform the Lugnal of his expedition to the South,” Beren called out, “an expedition that is near to his heart and that he lavishly supported.”

“Wait…. Weren’t there a group of you?” one of the other guards asked.

“There were, I am all that is left,” Beren called. He arched his eyebrow meaningfully at Calliope who gave no response, then stepped out of the way. The guards exchanged worried glances before coming to an unspoken decision.

“Go ahead then, and know that you will regret it if this is some ruse,” the leader of the guards declared. Calliope fixed him with a look that left no doubt about how much more he would regret it if they ever crossed paths again, and then swept past in Beren’s wake.

Fortune & Glory: Grimdark Pulp RP

The fire consuming the smithy guttered and died, the last of its palm leaf thatching flying upwards on the rush of hot air. Jocasta’s cheeks were puffed and her face turned slowly red as she held her breath. Several of the villagers ran into the smithy and began dousing charred wood with buckets of water, which hissed and steamed as they struck the cedar planks. Spots appeared in front of her eyes and she began to sway noticeably but she managed to hold her breath for another half a minute before letting out an explosive gasp. Flames burst back into life in a few places but the villagers quickly beat them out with damp cloths, or doused them with water. Jocasta didn’t know any spells designed for extinguishing fire but she had been able to reverse a spell for breathing underwater that allowed her to suck all the air away from the fire in the blacksmiths shop.

Fires were everywhere, whether this was a result of deliberate arson or merely a side effect of unattended cook fires or overturned lanterns it was difficult to say. Smoke and showers of sparks soared into the strange twilight sky, here and there lit by burning palm leaves held aloft by the heat. Beren was standing at the head of a line of villagers who were passing buckets of water from the oasis, tossing them tirelessly onto the other blazes that threatened to consume the village. They were nearly all under control now. For the most part the construction was a kind of adobe that proved difficult to burn, but the poorest areas, simple palm shacks, and the more affluent ones which used timber had proved very flammable in the dry desert environment. Some of those buildings had to be knocked down with spears and other improvised poles to prevent the spread of the flames. The inn they had stayed at was now a pile of glowing coals, though Jocasta’s enterprising dragonflies had, somehow, managed to drag her pack clear before the inferno consumed it. That had been a stroke of luck because there had been a scroll of fimblewinter in there that had saved the apothecary shop by encasing it in a crust of ice.

There was nothing they could do for the dead, which included the apothecary herself who had been gutted by a tar-fiend’s kopesh. Jocasta had seen a score of bodies, though no one had performed anything so formal as a count. The bodies were laid in the street, ignored while the villagers worked to put out the last few fires. There were perhaps twice as many dead tar-fiends, they had been piled in an undignified heap in the town square seeming harmless in death once the animating hate had been stabbed or bludgeoned out of them. Curiously no flies molested the pile of corpses as though the insects were put off by the blackish black blood that oozed from their wounds. The combination of smoke, human blood, and the strange ichor made Jocasta’s nose wrinkle in disgust.
Jocasta wondered if the enemy dead had been searched, but she was too exhausted from her spell work to volunteer for the grizzly task. Instead she trudged back to the apothecary’s shop and went inside. The sheath of ice from the fimblewinter spell had melted but the residue of the spell kept it cool inside and coated several pieces of glassware with condensate. The sky above was still dark as though stained a constant twilight by the evil forces that transfigured the moon into a leering face but even so it was far hotter than she was used to. Jocasta wondered what life had been like during Natu… during the time of sorcerer pharaohs who could wield such magic. What wonders and terrors had they been able to conjure? What horrors had the war which destroyed their civilization brought about. Well the tar-fiends for one, if Jocasta was any judge.

The shop had two rooms on its ground floor. The front was a large space lined with shelves stacked with bundles of pungent herbs, wax sealed amphorae filled with oils, phials of bright mineral powders, boxes of locust carapaces and snake skins, and the hundred other tools of the trade. The back was more of a lab or kitchen with brass stands and alchemic glassware. Blank papyri were gathered into bundles with swan feather quills and small ornate ink pots with brass tops. Several charcoal brasiers and oil lamps had been thoroughly snuffed by her scroll, the potions that had been simmering above them cold and ruined. The second story was much more abbreviated, containing only a bed, a prayer mat and the few worldly possessions of the now dead apothecary. It reminded Jocasta of her old potion shop, which seemed somehow like she had read about it in a post years ago.

Jocasta found some tea leaves and wrapped them in cloth, crushing them with the heel of her hand before dropping the bundle into a kettle that she sat upon one of the braziers. Tired as she was, she managed a spell to ignite the coals before flopping gracelessly into a chair of woven cane.

“Sayadati!” a woman's voice called as she rushed into the shop, a child of seven or eight in her arms. Jocasta’s eyes snapped open as the woman came to a stop before her, a look of despair on her face. The child had been wounded, a bloody shawl was pressed to his side and his flesh was pale and feverish. No doubt the woman had hoped to find help from the village healer, not aware that she was already dead. Jocasta stood up and gestured towards the bench that ordinarily was used for counting out weights of incense and marjoram.

“Lay him down,” she told the woman in her own language and she complied, gently laying the child atop the work bench. Jocasta removed the bloodied shawl to discover a nasty but shallow wound. The child whimpered as she examined the cut, eyes bright and febrile. Jocasta laid her hand on his brow and recited a spell she had learned back in Andred, sending the boy into a mystical sleep. Retrieving the now simmering kettle she wiped the wound clean with the warm astringent tea and a linen cloth she found under the bench. Blood continued to well up each time she cleaned it. Clucking under her breath she began to poke around the shelves, finding a pot of honey and a roll of catgut thread.

“If only I had…” she muttered to herself then spun as the woman shrieked. One of the dragonflies was struggling to lift the lid on a small clay pot. It succeeded, sending the lit crashing to ground before diving inside. A moment later it emerged hopelessly tangled in spiderweb. The dragonfly flitted drunkenly across the room to land on the table, trailing cobweb like pantomime smoke. Jocasta shook her head at the enchantment's antics and then scrapped the cobwebs from it. She combined the spider silk with the honey and then packed the wound with the resulting poultice. That done, she incanted a quick cleansing cantrip and then sewed the wound shut with the thread before wrapping the whole thing in a linen bandage. The child already looked better, some color returning to his dusky features.

“Thank you Sayadati, thank you, I can never repay you!” the woman gushed. Jocasta made a tired gesture of dismissal and sat back down into the chair, definitely ready for a rest. Which of course was the time a drover stumbled into the shop clutching at a severed finger.

“By Dannan’s tits, it is always something,” Jocasta griped as she stood up and got to work.
By the time Beren and Fazel arrived she had stitched up six wounds, set two broken arms, and placed a tooth back in its socket. If the farmer rinsed his mouth with the potion she had concocted twice a day for the next week, he might even keep it. She wasn’t a healer as such, but she had spent a fair amount of time learning from hedge witches and crones who tended to specialize in such things and so had learned the rudiments. The former apothecary had lacked magical talents but had made up for it by keeping her shop surprisingly well stocked which had helped Jocasta immensely.

“Our people are thankful for your efforts and those of the Rajul Khasab, both in war and peace,” Fazel said somberly. The old man was leaning heavily on his staff, but by the looks of several dark stains on the old wood, he had done more than provide sage advice during the attack. Jocasta dipped her hands into a basin of water and scrubbed them clean. Her grasp on the language wasn’t complete yet but ‘Rajul Khasab’ was some kind of local idiom which meant something like ‘wooden man’ or ‘man made of hard timber’. It was clearly a reference to Beren and had enough humorous associations in her own language to make Jocasta smile despite her weariness.

“Truly, the White God has sent you to us in this evil hour,” he continued. This made Jocasta uncomfortable and she could have sworn she felt the pulse of the mark the demon had placed upon her in that cavern in the frozen north.

“Well I don’t know about that,” Jocasta countered, "hopefully gratitude will extend to paying for all the supplies I used?” She made an expansive gesture to encompass the shop but Fazel shook his head sadly.

“Fatima had no family and no apprentice, I am glad that her things are finding the use she would have wanted for them,” Fazel said. Beren dragged out two more of the cane chairs and Jocasta poured them both cups of tea that she laced liberally with sugar. In Andred, sugar would have been a luxury, but Fatima had it in plentiful supply, perhaps it was more common in the south.

“Rajul Khasab and I have been discussing the attack and we cannot discover the logic of it,” Fazel confessed. Beren shook his head.

“Beren really is fine,” he admonished.

“I saw the tar-fiends escape with a stone tablet of some kind, from the temple,” Jocasta said. Fazel’s eyes sharpened at her words. Jocasta suspected that if the creatures had merely wanted to slaughter the village, they could have done far more damage than they had. Some will had directed them to their theft and there was no prize for guessing whose.

“There was an old stone, with an inscription in a forgotten language, we held it as Holy but we could not decipher the words,” Fazel said, “what would such beasts want with such a thing?”

“If it is an artifact of the time of the Black Pharaoh, then nothing good I’ll bet,” Jocasta said darkly. One of her dragon flies landed on the spoon in her tea cup and began to stir noisily until Jocasta shooed it away.

“Perhaps if we recover it, it will give us some clue as to how to fight against the plagues which assail our peaceful village,” Fazel mused, as though considering it. He wasn’t fooling Jocasta for a second, he had someone in mind to do the recovering and it wasn’t ‘we’ in any real sense.

“Jo can translate it for sure,” Beren put in helpfully.

“The Rajul Khasabya overstates my skills,” Jocasta replied, deliberately mangling the idiom so it meant something closer to ‘wooden headed man’ which made Fazel chuckle.

“We would be grateful for anything you can do, and would be willing to pay generously for your aid,” he wheedled.

Bodacious Bounties: Bounty Hunter AU

Jocasta heaved a theatrical sigh and took another sip of the drink.

“Momma did warn me not to wear my heart on my ass cheek,” she said, tilting the can in jaunty salute.

“So who are you hunting?” Neil asked. Jocasta raised an eyebrow.

“Maybe you?” she suggested. Neil could be charming but there was no doubt in her mind that he could also be irritating enough that any number of people might have an interest in renewing the acquaintance by force of arms. Stars, it was a rare person who didn’t steal something from someone to keep body and soul together, and sufficiently lubricated with alcohol or other drugs. Neil put a hand to his chest and gasped in mock alarm.

“Oh no, she played the old ‘show-up-in-a-bar-covered-in-cooking-ingredients-in-order-to get-invited-back-to-an-apartment-strip-off-and-put-down-all-my-weaons-take-a-shower-and-then-get-my-man’ ruse and I fell for it, like a sucker!” Neil said in mock horror. Jocasta snickered and then sat back into the chair. At some unseen signal from their mistress two of the drones darted forward, a curtain of coherent light blazed from the head of one and the hologram of an evil looking man. He had a single biological eye that seemed to blaze with malice, his second replaced with a bulky looking augmetic. A turban was wrapped around his head and his beard and mustache bristled as though electrified. One of the drones flitted around, making little attack runs on the holograms bulbous nose before pulling up at the last second. The hologram seemed to blink and flinch, somehow conveying the idea that its hands, not pictured, were swatting at the dragonfly shaped drone.

“Is that… The Black Caliph? Isn’t he dead?!” Neil demanded.

“So he would like people to believe, but they never found a body and there are plenty of people willing to pay for him even twenty years after the massacre,” Jocasta said. The hologram blinked out at some unseen signal from the bounty hunter, the drone swerving and colliding with its fellow with a clatter of little mechanical manipulators as they tussled and played.

“He has had his face rebuilt and limited genetic reconditioning so he can enjoy his retirement,” Jocasta explained. If you had the credits you could change almost anything about yourself, facial reconstruction was fairly common but genetic alteration was an expensive and involved process. Genetic alteration was highly controlled in the Terran Hegemony, reserved for the treatment of diseases and modifications for the countless soldiers and sailors of the military. Gene shock was a real concern and most alterations to genetic code came with sterilization to prevent a genomes-gone-wild situation. That didn’t mean it didn’t happen of course, if you had the credits you could find a clinic that would look the other way, or you could simply go to one of the Free Worlds our out into the Gulf where Terran rule had yet to spread. Some of those places could be pretty grim, it wasn’t difficult to install dormant viruses and other such gene-ware to prevent wayward serfs from getting uppity.

“No face and no DNA? That is going to make him hard to find.”

“Hence the ‘hunter’ component of my job title,” Jocasta agreed dryly.

“I can help you get your man,” Neil said, his voice filled with a confidence that had momentarily fled it when she revealed who her target was.

“No doubt,” Jocasta said in a tone that suggested maybe she had a few doubts but was keeping them to herself out of politeness.

“But first, what does a man of such obvious accomplishment,” she paused to gesture around the apartment with an expressive tilt of her drink, “need my help with?”

Penny's Pencils

Scum and Villainy - Plentiful Bounty

@rush99999 For the viewing pleasure of beknighted Englishmen everywhere!

Scum and Villainy - Plentiful Bounty

Scum and Villainy - Plentiful Bounty