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The Knight's Song

"What is your name Sir Knight?" Juliette asked. By the stiffening in the mans posture he was startled to be reminded she was there.

"I should like to be able to relate all the events of Sir Ulfengrad's heroic rescue when next I speak to my noble father, even such...minor trivialities as yourself," she said, her tone perfectly sweet and innocent despite the implied insult. She wouldn't be speaking to her 'noble father' anywhere this side of the grave but that, like the fact that any nobility she could claim was spoiled by her bastardry, didn't seem like the thing to stress. Haukenbrass was silent for a moment, clearly waying the risks of offending an unknown noblewoman against the desire to be insulting to anyone connected, no matter how innocently, to Sir Ulfengrad.

"Haukenbrass," he bit out, choosing the middle road of complying with the request but being truculent about it. Juliette almost but not quite repressed a snigger.

"And riding down on dew shone grass, he met the noble Horse's Ass,
Where like falcons who meet a-wing they with voice and ..." Juliette's voice rose in clear bardic song, meant to be recounted to the strumming of a lute. Her own lute, she realized with an inwards curse was lost in whatever cursed place she had awakened yesterday. Haukenbrass made a strangled grunt of anger.

"Haukenbrass..." he growled through clenched teeth.

"Oh Ill be sure to correct it before I sing it at the next tavern," she assured the knight with a smile that shone with perfect sincerity.

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

Rene slept deep and dreamless with exhaustion. Even for all his genetic enhancement, all his physical and mental conditioning, the events of the day had pushed him far closer to the edge than he had ever come. Physical exhaustion was something that all marines came to terms with during the brutal six months of training they underwent upon induction, but during that time Rene had been able to keep his emotions separate, able to maintain his intellectual objectivity.That had not been the case with Solae trapped under uncountable thousands of tons of soil, a mere tremor of the earth away from a slow death by starvation or suffocation.

As he slept afternoon slipped into night and the chilling of the air squeezed the last rain clouds from the sky in a final spiteful cloud burst. The heavens cleared to reveal the bluish glow of light reflected from the gas giant, and an aurora which must always have been present but drowned out by direct sunlight, began to play across the northern horizon in flourishes of green and blue with occasional explosions of bright pink pastels.

The electrical jolt of the alert signal from his comm implant woke Rene with start, months of training sending his hand towards a weapon he wasn’t carrying before he was fully aware of the action.

“Lady Solae is awake,” Mia’s voice rushed breathily as Rene lifted himself up of the deck where he had all but collapsed. At some point someone had propped a pillow under his head and a canteen of water lay a few feet away. Pain rippled through him, deep aches in his muscles from the intense work of hauling the hoses around as improvised excavators, blistered and raw hands from pulling and shoving on the pipe casings and a network of cuts and scrapes from pieces of sharp rock. He was filthy, coated from scalp to toes in a carapace of dried mud and grit. For an absurd second he wondered if he should shower before he presented himself to the duchess and then lurched across the deck on stiff legs into the bay where the medicomp stood humming, its sound proofing drowning out whatever noise Solae was making as she slapped at the inner side of the glass. Mia was full capable of opening the unit if she thought it best, but the AI clearly didn’t feel it/she had enough information to make that decision. Rene’s glance at the read outs was incidental as he triggered the release switch. If Solae was well enough to move then she was in no real danger, at least nothing that the medicomp itself wouldn’t be able to fix over time. There was a hiss of pressurised air and the sudden sharp scent of antiseptic as the glass shield drew back freeing the duchess.

“Oh thank the Stars,” Rene all but gasped, leaning forward to kiss Solae’s forehead in a fervent prayer of relief, ignoring the chirps of disapproval as the mud and dust flaking off his body spoiled the sterile field.

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Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

Junebug came down the ramp in a series of rattling thuds that drew all eyes to her.

"Whoa," Neil commented and even Taya who had been privy to what Junebug had been spending her time on during Neil's 'funeral' ceremonies on Cyloneika, looked impressed. She had changed out of her familiar battlegear and was dressed now in the suit of powered armor she had began work on years ago. The suit was of the same brownish tan ceramic her chestplate was made of, indeed the repair kit for her original armor had been used to provide the outer layer of this suit, the inner core consisted of sandwiched layers of kevlar/monocrystal composite, which was relatively light weight though the armor would still have been hard to maneuver without the power assist of the servos built into it. The mechanical guts of the armor had been cannibalized from a mobile surgical unit whose laser scanners and other imaging software as well as ultra precise servo controllers kept the armors guide points a few millimeters from Sayeeda's skin as she moved, giving her a fluid control that differed little from her natural movement. A pair of power cells were perched between her shoulder blades, protected by sharply angled armor plates. The helmet was also based on her usual commo helmet, though the addition of sensors, an imporved heads up display and a more sophisticated commo suite had bulked it up to a point that it didn't seem out of place with the extra three inches in height she gained from the armor. The faceplate was matte black due to simple filtering, though it could be changed on command to be clear or mirrored. Slung across her chest was a two millimeter rail gun. The weapon had three barrels, each of which accellerated a small glass pellet up a spiraling track before they exited the barrel at close to a hundred thousand feet per second. It was designed to be a vehicle mounted point defense weapon and would have had two much kick to wield without the extra mass of the armor, even so a boxy gyroscopic stabalizer hung just forward of the magazine, designed to cut down on the prodigious torque the weapon would create. A large pistol designed for the larger hands of a Hex hung at her belt as a back up, and her familiar submachine gun, looking toy like against the bulk of the new suit, was strapped to her thigh in case of real emergency. The final touch to the small arsenal was a wrist mounted grenade launcher, its drum magazine cannibalized two wrap around her right arm in a spiral, allowing her to select from different munition types on the fly. Sayeeda would have preferred just to hang grenades from her armor, but Taya had pointed out that the kind of fine motor control she needed to use them might be harder in the armor and that hanging a bunch of munitions where they could be cooked off by enemy fire somewhat defeated the point.

"What?" Sayeeda asked innocently as she climbed into the jeep beside Neil, the suspension creaking under the sudden addition of the armors considerable weight.

"If I'm going to go to the ball the least I can do is dress formal," she said with a grin that was audible through her helmet speakers.

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As anyone who has RPed me can attest, I care about helmets...

Post what ever

(Alcibiades would like to know your location)

@POOHEAD189

*talking alot of guff for someone in Sicilian Expedition range*

Post what ever

Nearly everybody's Fantasy World is WAY over capitalized. Even during the height of the Athenian Empire, possibly the most monetized empire (due to the need to pay the rowers in the fleet) in the ancient world, specie was relatively rare outside major trading ports and there was CONSIDERABLE slack in both the agrarian and what passed for the manufacturing sectors. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Dogs of War: Old World Mercenaries

Camilla's eyes snapped open. Cydric's warm body was pressed against her, the steady rise and fall of his chest soothing in the near darkness. Gunir by contrast snored like a thunderstorm, each outbreath punctuated by a curious whoop. Thor, Gunir's wounded kinsman wheezed a counterpoint on the same theme. It wasn't the snoring that had woken her she was sure, having had a great deal of practice sleeping in army camps over the past year or so. At the siege of Konigsberg she had even slept while the Imperial guns boomed round the clock to reduce the walls of that ancient citadel. Something here was wrong. The fire that had blazed in the hearth of the great hall had declined to a deep red glow that poped and sizzled as the last of the timbers crumbled into flickers of flame. They had slept in the hall in the fashion of old Imperial retainers rather than seeking one of the few inns in the town. None of them had been willing to extend credit to the bedraggled adventuers who had stumbled out of the hills, and they were filthy and lice ridden places besides. A half dozen other figures lay slumped in sleep on pallets or on furs like Camilla and Cydric.

"Cydric," Camilla whispered in a voice so quiet that it was swallowed by the soft whistle of wind outside. Her lover didn't stir but at the end of the hall one of the shadows seemed to still. Camilla felt her heart rise up into her throat. She badly wanted to believe it was just a trick of the light cast by the dying fire but somehow she knew it wasn't anything so begin.

"Alle Armi!" she shouted in Tilean and leaped from under the fur lined blankets, snatching her rapier from where it hung from the arm of a carved bench. The shadows exploded into motion surging forward into the hall. A man screamed as he was woken by a blow that must have disembowled him for the red flash of glittering blood. Shout of alarm went up from a half dozen throats as the naked Tilean leveled her blade at the onrushing shadow and thrust. The blade bit into the things body and stuck as fast as if she had thrust it into the oak door of a tavern, the blade bowed and would have snapped if Camilla hadn't leaped backwards. She had a momentary impression of a tree, its branches grown into long sharp schythe like arms before the creature seized her and lifted her into the air. Camilla let go of her sword and twisted as the thing lifted her over head, kicking of the stone wall. The thing was strong but her momentum was enough to topple it over with a crash. The hall was in pandemonium now, the tree things had ripped several of the armsmen to pieces, but others were armed and fighting back. She could hear Gunir roaring and cursing all manlings for craven fools. Camilla hit the ground and tried to execute a throw, but the thing that held her was two heavy, its branches squeezed her wrist painful as it drew back another limb for a death stroke. Timber shattered in spray of icy sap as Cydric brought his bastard sword down with both hands. Unlike Camilla's slender blade it sheered clean through, propelled by Cydric's prodigious strength.

"Elvish treachery!" Gunir howled, his axe hewing another of the creatures appart. They didn't look like any elves Camilla had ever heard of, but this wasn't the time to worry about it. Alarm bells were beginning to ring as cries of alarm spread from the hall into the city proper. Camilla seized one of the severed branches and cast it into the fire. Light flared up as the wood exploded into flames. The nightmarish creatures turned to stare hatefully at her with their cold eyes. Besides Cydric and herself the two dwarves were the only surviovrs in the hall, though several of the strange tree creatures had been hacked and splintered by the Graffin's guardsmen before they had been bludgeoned down and torn apart. Each of the trees was taller than a man and carved with strange twisting runes. They looked ghastly, smeared with the gore of their victims. Camilla counted a half dozen, though from the screams coming from the streets there must be more outside. With a wordless how the things rushed forward at the survivors. Cydric stepped in front of the disarmed Camilla and hacked at one of the onrushing trees. Another brushed Gunir aside and seized Thor, lifting the injured dwarf up into the sky. There was an enormous boom and shower of splinters as somehow Thor had managed to snag the coachgun from Gunir's belongings. The tree thing crashed to the ground dropping the dwarf who cursed in his own tongue. Camilla skipped backwards looking for a weapon and finding none, instead she snatched up a burning length of timber and brandished it before her.

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Captain Oliver Mercer from my Muskets vs Cthulhu Stories