Penny

Gold & Glory: AU thread

“Veshya Kay Santaan,” Emmaline said carefully annonciating each syllable. Rajad clucked irritably.

“Kee, like a key for a lock,” the former slave responded.

“My gods, you sound like a drunken monkey,” Rajad scolded her sourly. Emmaline rolled her eyes.

“Well your Reikspiell is awful too,” she replied in an insulting imitation of Rajads accent.

“I do not sound like that,” Rajad scowled.

“You sound like a Veshya Kee Santaan,” Emmaline rejoined. Rajad’s eyes rose to the heavens in a prayer of deliverance.

“That was better,” he admitted grudgingly. The pair of them were sitting on the shaded folksail deck in the cross legged pose Rajad had insisted upon. It turned out that Rajad had some experience with ships, though smaller ones than the Hammer and with something called a lateen rig. His basic competence and willingness to help had stood him in good stead with the crew who were suspicious both of his exotic looks and anything to do with Emmaline. While she was happy enough for him to help with pulling on ropes and other nautical nonsense however, Emmaline had bought Rajad with a specific purpose in mind. This was her second lesson in Indi, the language spoken in distant Ind and she felt she was doing fairly well, despite Rajads various colorful metaphors. The strange stretches he insisted on performing, something he called ‘yoga’ were less to her taste but she humored him as part of the teaching process. It would take months to reach Ind, perhaps as many as six depending on the winds, and Emmaline intended to be able to speak the language fluently by the time she arrived. Fortunately she had already learned to speak Brettonian, badly and Tilean, better. She could even get by in Arabyian though she didn’t get much chance to practice. A wide variety of tongues was an asset when it came to learning a new one.
Emmaline like Rajad, he was an interesting man, though he said little enough, it was clear that whatever story had bought him to the Sartosa slave pens was a great one, just as it was clear he had been no mere sailor before his capture. Though he was unceasingly insulting he was also pleased to share his knowledge with her, seeming to view it as a genuine pleasure.

“What is he doing?” Rajad asked, looking forward to the quarterdeck. Emmaline cast an eye down towards the quarterdeck.

“Practising I assume,” Emmaline replied, resting her arms in the position she had seen Rajad use. He clucked and reached out and adjusted her hands.

“Idiot girl,” he muttered. Emmaline extended her middle finger, spoiling the pose for a moment.

“It is wise to practice,” he said neutrally, so neutrally in fact that the rebuke was clear to her.

“I practice,” Emmaline replied defensively. Rajad gave her a hard look.

“You are lazy and self indulgent, you only practise that which interests you,” he scolded her. Emmaline snickered.

“What is the point of gold if not to indulge yourself?” Emmaline asked. Unfortunately any response was cut off by a bellow from above.

“Breakers! Breakers ahead!” They had reached the Fool Rocks.

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

Rene let out a breath from between pursed lips feeling somewhat deflated. Solae was right, creating a vast and unseen conspiracy didn’t make any of their immediate problems or priorities different. He climbed back into bed and resumed holding his fiancee.

“Truthfully, I’m not sure what we can do even about Duke Tan,” he admitted.

“I’m not afraid to… well that is it's my duty to fight to stop him of course, but I’m not going to risk your life in some foolish gesture,” he squeezed her gently as he spoke the words, they were the honest truth if ever he had spoken it. There might well be aristocrats whos support of Tan was half hearted, but they were unlikely to jump ship until something more substantial than a rival claimant to the Duchy appeared.

“The most we can do right now is keep you out of his hands, which is a huge blow if he is coordinating with conspirators elsewhere in the Empire. Without the PEAs his friends have to be wondering if he really went along with whatever their plan was.” Rene supposed that Tan might have sent messengers on fast ships to inform his co-conspirators of his difficulties, but maybe not, depending on how powerful and ruthless the conspiracy was it might be safer for Tan to keep them guessing. Rene wondered what he might find if he ever got into the Duke’s records. It was unlikely that he kept a list of his conspirators, but there would be enough strings there to start seriously unraveling the rest of it.

“Even if the Kalderi helped us in a military way, and from what I have seen of them any kind of large scale military commitment is unlikely, that might hurt even. The Empress is the puppet of the alien scourge who destroyed our ancestors!” Rene parroted in a tone one might hear on one of the holocasts which focused on political punditry.

“Sorry, I know you're tired,” Rene apologised, falling silent. For a time his thoughts continued to spiral in wild unproductive directions. Then slowly the stress of the previous day and the relief that Solae was all right began to steal over him like a weighted blanket.

“It will all be alright,” he reassured his lover. Intellectually he knew there were huge holes in that statement. What they could, or even should be doing was open to debate. Deep down however Rene really did believe it would be alright. Though he would never admit it, he held a naive belief that if he did his best and his cause was just that things would work out for him. That was nonsense of course, but it had the advantage that he kept looking for a chance long after others would have given up, and because he was looking for one, he generally found one eventually.

Gold & Glory: AU thread

“Tobaro,” Morgan grunted looking resigned but not disagreeing.

“Aye, they won’t look for us there, though vittles and supplies will be hellish expensive, given its a desolate hole in the ground.” Morgan was perhaps shading the truth here, spars and rigging and other supplies were plentiful and probably cheap in Tobaro, on account that so many ships wrecked there and were salvaged. Half of those wrecks were said to be the works of the locals of course which didn’t make anyone feel any better about the prospect.

Emmaline cast a look back at the harbor mouth of Sartossa but no ships had made the exit since the Hammer’s unconventional departure. It would be sun down by the time the winds and tides shifted to allow a ship the size of the Sea Drake to put to sea. Of course that gave Von Roberts all the time he needed to gather supplies and recruit his crew.

“He will probably waste his time looking in to the Arabyian harbors,” Markus mused, proving Emmaline wasn’t the only one thinking about pursuit. It made a certain amount of sense, the Sea Drake was half again the size of the Hammer and out gunned her two to one. Von Roberts would be much better served sinking them and then taking on the quest unopposed.

“Sou-souwest till we are out of sight of the peaks, then shape course nor-norwest for Tobara,” Markus ordered. Morgan nodded and looked up at the flapping pennon. Even to Emmaline’s luberly eye she could see that the breeze was freshening. The Hammer was picking up speed as the helm swung onto the more westerly tack, tugging out the sails in a series of deafening cracks which settled into the steady creaking of timbers as the deck began to slant to the wind.

“Well I’m for a bath,” Emmaline remarked, although she was almost dry from her immersions, a rime of salt was forming and making the silk dress rub.

“We don’t have water for…” Morgan began before falling silent as Emmaline shot him a poisonous glare. She lifted her fingers and wiggled them.

“Ill handle my own water, you don’t see me telling you how to sheet a jib or whatever,” she called over her shoulder as she headed for the cabin

In This Fine Town Of Arkham - A Lovecraftian Mystery

@Dark Cloud

Opportunity observed the servant with growing irritation, first at his behavior and then at her own when she realized that she hadn't asked the fellows name. It was one thing to look down on these provincials for their hackneied immitation of the English Gentry, it was quite another to fall into one of those stereotypes herself. Grimiacing with distaste she finished afixing her masquerade mask, an emerald and gold peacock piece with a gold egret and then touched the servant on the shoulder.

"A simple accident sir, no harm done," she said in as gracious a tone as she could muster.

"No doubt the fellow was simply in a rush, it happens," she said magnanimously, smiling at the new comer.

"That is right isn't it sir?" she asked the dazed looking man.

Gold & Glory: AU thread

They raced through the streets of Sartossa as fast as their legs could carry them, which in Markus and Rajad's case was pretty fast but in Emmaline's was somewhat less so.

"You were the one that insisted I wear a dress!" Emmaline protested as Markus all but pulled her along by the wrist. Fortunately there were no ambushes waiting for them. Hired killers tended to grow somewhat squeamish when a dozen of them were cut down in the attempt, and those Von Roberts had hired decided that the fifty percent upfront was probably all they were going to get at good value. The danger now was that the port would be closed because of the incident. Von Roberts as an established pirate would have the advantage if it ended up before the council.

Markus all but hurled Emmaline up the gang plank and onto the hammer, ignoring her squawk of protest as he started bellowing orders to cast of lines. Morgan who had been in the middle of loading stores of dried fish, didn't hesitate, shouting orders through cupped hands and yelling for pirates to roust their mates from whatever bars or brothels they had vanished into. Within ten minutes all but two of the crew, too drunk or perhaps dead to be roused were aboard. Unfortunately the winds and tides did not favor leaving port, infact the making tide was nearly the worst possible time and the sea breeze only confounded matters.

"Boats?" Morgan asked skeptically. Towing the ship out by way of its boats might be the only way to get the Hammer out of harbor before the ebbing tide, but towing a ship against a flow of water was a back breaking exercise.

"We never make it," Markus replied bluntly.

"I have an idea," Emmaline interjected. Morgan glanced sideways at her but continuted talking as though she hadn't spoken.

"We could take our way out, be almost slower than boats the reaches wed have to make, and i'd not bet we dont end up aground if we miss our stays."

"I have an idea!" Emmaline repeated more emphatically.

"Have you become a master sailor witch?" he asked wearily as Markus quirked an eyebrow.

"And get all salty and avast thar ma harties? Perish the thought, but I think I can get the ship out of harbor..."

Emmaline rode the bower anchor down onto one of the ships both in which six sailors stood agog. They all stared in horror as it settled onto the timbers. The boat creaked slightly as they guided it down on the timbers. Emmaline kept her hand on the anchor as she stepped onto the planking, whispering a chant in a low voice.

"Row!" Markus shouted from the prow and the sailors, scrambled to their oars trying not to look at the golden haired woman. They took up the stroke and the boat moved out over the water, pulling the anchor cable behind them. What disturbed them was how easy it was, because they knew that rowing an anchor that weighed upwards of a thousand pounds of bronze and steel should have been a task. Instead the boat rode as lightly as if it were not there at all. They covered the hundred yards of the cables length towards the mouth of the harbor till the rope grew taut.

"Ok put it over the side," Emmaline ordered. The sailors would have been less disturbed to touch a corpse, but the six of them gingerly lifted the anchor, ignoring the fact it weighted no more than a woman and dropped it over the side. The second the anchor left Emmaline's grasp it plunged like the massive weight it was, launching a shower of spray as it sped to the bottom.

"Haul!" the coxain shouted through cupped hands and on the deck of the Hammer, sailors threw their weight against the capstain bars, hauling the ship out into the harbor towards the anchor by main strength. Within ten minutes the Hammer was atop her anchor, the making tide running against her cutwater.

"What do we do now?" one of the sailors asked. Emmaline gave him a sour look and then looked down at her ruined silk dress.

"Yeah well dont say I never did anything for you," she grumbled and then leaped into the water, pulling herself down the cable hand over hand. There was a splash from the Hammer as the second bow anchor was dropped and then she began to rotate slowly around the cable.

"Haul you dogs!" Morgan roared at the boat crew, who obediently began hauling the first anchor up. Once again it weighed almost nothing and a minute later they pulled a spluttering sea weed caked Emmaline and her strangely light anchor up onto the boat. It took two repititions of the process until they were far enough out into the channel that the sails would fill and the Hammer began to move out of the passage at the speed of a walking man. An exhausted looking Emmaline and the full thousand pounds of anchor were hauled back up onto the deck, the sorceress having no strength left to work the spell.

"At least," she gasped, "I out ran my counterfeit money spell."

Gold & Glory: AU thread

"Can you not summon up magics to destroy them?" Rajad asked, his voice surprisingly calm as two more pistol shots thunked into the lemon tree above them. Emmaline couldn't think of any spell that would help, right now there was so much metal whirring around that it was difficult to focus on any one piece of it.

"A magician never reveals her tricks," Emmaline said defensively earning a snort from Rajad. A pirate leaped over the pot intending to outflank Markus. Rajad caught him by the ankle and jerked hard turning a controlled leap into a face plant hard enough to knock the pirate senseless. Emmaline snatched a pistol from his belt and pointed it into the ruck around Markus. The trigger snapped forward and the weapon squibbed with a hiss.

"Oh for Sigmar's sake!" she yelled and hurled the weapon into the mass of pirates, braining one with a crack. Rajad pulled a wicked looking scimitar up off the ground and skewered another pirate that tried to round the planter. The square was a chaos of yells and curses. Von Roberts 'kill him, kill him' echoed off the pavers. Emmaline squirmed around the planter, snatching a lemon of the tree which she hurled at Von Roberts, catching him in the chest. He turned to glare daggers at her.

"I'm going to kill you..."

"Captain Van Roberts is trying to steal the slaves!" Emmaline screamed at the top of her lungs. Across the plaza the half dozen pirates guarding the slave market goggled at her as she run towards them waving her arms. One of them leveled his coach gun. Emmaline dropped to the ground and snapped her fingers. The gun went off with a boom, non lethal at the range but pummeling several of Von Roberts' thugs. The guard stared at his weapon in shock but a pair of pirates turned and fired at him with pistols. Other coach guns began to go off as the pirates who had been focused on Markus began to rush towards the guards.

"Von Roberts is trying to steal the slaves!" she yelled again and started to half crawl half scramble out of the street. Rajad leaped across the square, siezed her by neck and belt and hurled her out of the line of fire. She crashed into a rickety cart, toppling it over as she rolled to her hands and knees.

"You are a very stupid woman," Rajad observed as he reached her side, scimitar smeared with blood. Emmaline saw Von Roberts give Markus one more hate filled glare and then turn to rush down the street.

"Well no arguments here," Emmaline panted. Markus continued to carve a swath through the attackers, who with the lessening of the pressure were clearly thinking hard about the cold embrace of Morr.

Gold & Glory: AU thread

"Flintbrook is it," the man whom Markus had correctly identified as Von Roberts sneered from the alleyway. He was wearing a vest that seemed festooned with pistols, each one thrust through a leather loop. Each hand held a gun as well and there was a sword buckled at his hip. Most of his crew were armed less extravagantly, though along the same lines.

"I didn't think you would be fool enough to leave your ship with only a whore and a dwarf for company," Von Roberts' sneered.

"Depends on the dwarf I s'pose," Sketti rumbled in what Emmaline had come to interpret as laughter. The slayer had unslung his axe and was making experimental cuts at the air, his grotesquely huge muscles bunching.

"I think I can see you off, whore or no whore," Markus called back sneeringly.

"Well just in case, I brought some friends, amazing what a few coins will buy you in this town," Von Roberts yelled back. He had a slight lisp Emmaline didn't remember, until she remembered she had clouted him in the face with her pistol the night before. As he spoke Emmaline saw a dozen more thugs materialize in the other alleys leading to the square.

"As it happens, I'm not a whore!" Emmaline shouted, stepping forward and at an angle that brought her closer to a large dirt filled crate which housed a lemon tree.

"Well... not only," she corrected before drawing herself up, "I'm also a powerful sorceress!" The boast drew laughs and snickers from the crowd.

"Mahila..." Rajad said in a warning tone, his eyes seeming to dart in all directions.

"Behold!" she said and then snapped her fingers. Von Roberts vanished in a roar and a gout of powder smoke. Emmaline threw herself side ways behind the planter a moment before several pistols cracked in her direction, one passing through the tree and sending down a flutter of leaves. Von Roberts stumbled back, slapping at his garments. He was alive but everyone of his pistols had misfired at the the same moment, or been encouraged to misfire when Emmaline had used her own pistol spring to use a spell to cut those of Von Roberts. The pirate looked shocked and outraged.

"Kill them!" he snarled, pulling his sword from his belt and waving his men forward. A score of pirates howled their battle cries and charged across the square, pistols cracking and cutlasses brandished.

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

"I think," Junebug said, toggling through thermal imaging on her visor, "that our friends would be sad if we started the party without them. It took her a frustrating heartbeat to make the interface do what she wanted even though she had modeled it after her normal combat helmet. It probably wasn't the best idea to have her first live fire run in the armor be in combat, but she would feel like a real sucker if she got killed with this thing still in the bay of the Highlander. Besides, as the old saying went, there was no kill like overkill. Ahead of them, pointing guns nervously from the lip of a gully, were thirty or so gang members from the Stingers. Presumabley these were something of an elite, picked for the raid on the drug warehouse. An icon blinked in her visor and she opened it with a flicker of her eyelash. It was a video feed from a camera that had been placed in the main street of town by Taya. All was quiet there, which was an obvious difference from the normal chaos of the drunken night time revel. Things were going to kick off their soon and the locals could sense it in the air.

"We supposed to wait all night for you big shots?" A dirty looking gangbanger with an assault rifle asked as Neil pulled the jeep to a halt. He had obviously planned the speech before he had seen Junebug and his eyes were wide with shock, giving his voice a whining quality. Not, Junebug thought, that he would have been intimidating under normal circumstances. She steeped from the Jeep making the struts squeal as they let off pressure.

"I mean you guys look like you could handle it without our help," Junebug observed. She thought her voice was devoid of emotion, but a snicker from Neil let her know that the insult hadn't been missed by at least one of those present.

"Hey," Another said looking at Saxon, "didn't you say it was a Hex what whacked our guys out in the village?" Junebug made a dismissive guesture, she had wondered if anyone was clued in enough to notice.

"Its fine, he is with us," she explained, though that didn't make any sense it wouldn't matter so long as it didn't become a discussion.

"The Stinger didn't come herself?" she asked, the light enhanced vision having already confirmed that was the case. The leader, Junebug decided to call him Paco, shook his head and thrust out his chest.

"Nah, she is too important for this kind of stuff, she sent me instead," the thug bragged. Neil snickered again but Junebug refrained from comment.

"So what is your plan Big Shot," Paco asked. Junebug squatted down with a slight hiss of hydraulics and touched a control on her arm. A small hologram shimmered up from her arm, depicting a map of the area made from the Highlanders cameras when she had landed. Paco goggled at the technology for a moment and then closed his mouth, all of the gang bangers closed in to ooh and ah. Stars it was a good thing the opposition was a crappy as these losers Junebug thought.

"There are two bunkers guarding the entry to an old quarry," she said, touching two rectangular structures at the entry way to what had once been a rock quarry. Calling them bunkers was a stretch, in reality they were block houses made from unfished timber that had been sprayed with layers of industrial adhesive and gravel. It actually wasn't a bad improvised fortification given the relatively low level of technology here, better than concrete or another composite which could have been shattered by sonics.

"There are two machine guns in each bunker, positioned to sweep the road," Junebug explained. "There is razor wire and some anti vehicle spikes to stop us from just rushing in."

"Probably there are only a half dozen guys in the storage facility other than those guys who are probably drunk or stoned or whatever anyway," she explained. Junebug suspected there were a good deal more than that, she had told the Spider the Scorpions were planning this raid and while most of his thugs would be preparing for the assault on the Scorpion Compound, doubtless his security here was keyed up.

"We can't face down machine guns!" one of the thugs all but shouted. Junebug rolled her eyes, though it was invisible to anyone but her, and she shouldn't have done it because it screwed her interface up for the moment it took to reset it. Another bug to work out.

"It won't be a problem," she assured them, "Ill take out the gun pits, and you guys move in as fast as you can, clear the wire and keep moving, once you are through the gates, the facility is yours, you can start loading drugs onto the trucks."

"Won't they call for help?" Paco demanded. Junebug shook her head.

"We are jamming all comms, we should be able to clear this place out before anyone is the wiser." That was a lie also, it would probably have been possible to do so, but it seemed a waste of effort. Paco and his goons ate it up though, a real life covert operation.

"Get your men ready and get inside as quickly as you can," she told him.

Fifteen minutes later everyone was in position. Neil had unslung a grenade launcher and Junebug crouched just out of sight of the bunkers, her body shielded by a shallow depression. Paco and his thirty desperados crouched behind them. It was a miracle none of them had given the game away by accidentally letting off a shot by accident, but even amatuers got lucky she supposed. Besides, they were an elite afterall.

"What are you laughing at?" Paco demanded. Junebug shook her head, watching Taya's video feed. Headlights were coming on and the lens vibrated slightly from the roar of engines. The Spiders were bringing up their vehicles.

"Alright Neil," Sayeeda said and stood up. With ease of practice she hefted the rail gun and aimed it at the bunker nearly a hundred feet away. There was an electric whir and a crack before an explosion converted the right side of one of the bunkers to blazing white fire, the plasticizer and the gravel both burning under the kinetic impact of a glass bead accelerated to near light speed. Neil's grenade launcher banged against his shoulder and a white flash lit the inside of the second bunker. Scream tore the night, sounding tinny and washed out by the railgun blast as fingers of white phosphorus belched from the bunkers windows. Junebug fired twice more blowing the first block house to pebbles that rained down on them even out here. Machine gun ammunition cooked off, roiling the smoke and giving color to the violence without adding to the destruction. The old quarry echoed and doubled the explosions till it sounded like a tank battle rather than a few shots.

"Go! Go! Go!" Junebug yelled, grabbing Paco and thrusting him towards the mouth of the quarry. In her haste she forgot the power assist and practically flung the man through the air. He lost his feet and sprawled on his face a moment before a burst of gunfire ripped out of the smoke. One of the rounds ricocheted of Junebug's chest plate, she targeted the blob of heat, an enemy soldier who had been unreasonabley lucky and pulled the trigger, ending his luck for the night and forever. Paco's men surged forward firing more or less at random although there were no targets. Still that was the right reflex. The reached the razor wire and began cutting at it with powered cutting bars pulling it aside as they went. The screams of pain that echoed back indicated that at least a few of them had cut themselves, but then they were through and into the facillity. Niel raised the grenade launcher and fired three rounds with a tap tap, pause tap. One of the grenades sailed into the doorway of the facility, the other two crashed into the rocky sides of the quarry, one on the east side and one on the west.

"Well that was easy," Neil observed. Both of the rock penetrating rounds detonated with a thunderous roar that doubled and intensified as thousands of pounds of rock was ripped appart and slid down to bury the entrance to the drug warehouse. A great cloud of dust roiled out, coating them with a spray of grit. A static charge kept Sayeeda's visor clear though Niel merely reached into his pocket and pressed his sunglasses down over his eyes. It was night time, but Junebug had to admit it looked awesome.

"You wasted a shot," Saxon hissed, irked not to have been involved in the fighting so far. There was a third boom, this one hollow and bass enough to rattle Junebug's chest even through the armor.

"Nah, just timed it right," Neil snickered. The third charge had been a bunker buster, the force of which had been sealed in by the collapsing hill side. Anyone inside the facillity whould have been pulped by the overpressure.

"Hot," Junebug observed as the rubble settled once again. There was a moments silence.

"I was promised a chance to kill," Saxon hissed, somehow contriving to sound sulky. Junebug turned and headed back towards the car. Judging by the video the shooting was just getting started in town.

"Don't worry, no more tricks, and plenty for everyone," she said with a smirk that only Neil could hear in her voice.

Penny's Pencils

In This Fine Town Of Arkham - A Lovecraftian Mystery

Opportunity sighed and stubbed out her cigarette. There were many things to love about America, a sense of immensity and wide open space that took her back to her childhood in Ceylon and India before her father had retired to England with its claustophobic stone walls and stifling regimental neatness. Unfortunately, at least here in the aptly named New England, people seemed to view the mother country as something to emulate rather than escape. Natives would blather on about how their families came up from Salem in sixtenwhogaveadamn and could trace their decendants back to wherever. Texas, Chicago, California, now those were places for a modern soul, not this rustic Arkam. Still there was work to be done here, and she had even found the excelsior convenient, chatting with a young professor about the possibility of searching for ship wrecks by air, perhaps when she was done with her other business it might even come to something.

Dressed in a gown of green silk with a daring slash up the thigh, Opportunity certainly looked more like she was on her way to the theatre in Chicago rather than to a stuffy dinner in Arkam, but she didn't see any reason to bend herself too far out of shape for the Wildes. She picked her handbag up from where it had sat and pulled her cloche hat down over her dark slightly curled hair.

"Wonderful," she told the footman, in her oddly cosmopolitan accent, "then lets go visit our American cousins shall we?"