Penny

Hard Nights, Dark Streets

We will do debts once everyone has their characters together, that way we can tie everyone together

Hard Nights, Dark Streets

@Guardian Angel Haruki

You would be most welcome!

Hard Nights, Dark Streets

@Dark CloudNot right now, once the others have characters in mind we can start working on our city/assigning debts

Hard Nights, Dark Streets

@XxFellsingxX Im happy to consider any playbook, I own dark streets also though I don't have a pdf of it.

@Dark Cloud If you tell me what playbook you would like I can screenshot the character creation sheet.

Urban Shadows 2 - The Ectoplasmic Boogaloo

@Dark Cloud@VeyrinDay@rocketrobie2@rush99999@XxFellsingxX

roleplayerguild.com/topics/187687-har…

Hard Nights, Dark Streets

Welcome to our Urban Shadows game. More information will be forthcoming as we brainstorm characters and brainstorm the city.

Rules can be found:

Rules

i.4pcdn.org/tg/1445670817768.pdf

@Dark Cloud@VeyrinDay@rocketrobie2@rush99999@XxFellsingxX

Dogs of War: Old World Mercenaries

Camilla pivoted right cutting through the grasping route with a clopping sound. The greenish gray root tip dropped to the snow crusted ground and began to slither forward towards the wood cutters. Emmaline kicked the agitated timber back into the forest. Her breath steamed in the cold winter air even as her body sweated from the effort of two hours spent trying to make headway into the stubborn forest. She had traded her rapier for a pair of hand axes with narrow half moon blades. Cydric and the dwarves were hacking their way deeper into the treeline with axes of their own setting the example for a score of soldiers similarly occupied. Camilla let the men work, restricting herself to targeting the constant swinging branches and questing roots that reached out to strike at the axemen.

"This isn't working," she called to Cydric who was standing atop a pile of greenish woodchips, hacking a great elm that had appeared during the night. The dwarves were cutting like daemons, wide mouth split in toothy grins, tireless in their assault on the woods. After two hours of frenzied effort though, they hadn't made much progress. The forest was resisting the attack. Even worse the areas on either end of the cutting line seemed to advance marginally each time Camilla glanced at them. They were beginning to form a decided pocket, the edges of which were slowly pinching in.

"We need to..."

One of the guardsman screamed like a gelded horse and Camilla's head whipped around fast enough to catch an elm tree gripping the man with great armlike boughs. She flung one of her axes overhand and it whipped thorough the air to bury itself near the base of one of the branches. Unbothered, the tree limbs drew apart with a crack of bone and spraying blood. The motion was oddly unhurried which was even more horrific than frantic action might have been. Screaming with rage and fear a half dozen of the soldiers threw themselves at the elm, cutting and hacking in a frenzy. The elm accepted the blows, as still and uncaring as any other tree save for the sheen of steaming blood on its bark.

"This is Elgi work," Gunir snarled, making 'Elgi' sound like no fouler insult could exist. Camilla didn't speak Khazalid of course, but she had been around enough dwarves to know a few of their words. Her skin prickled, expecting a flight of arrows to issue from the trees at any moment.

"We aren't going to cut our way through," Camilla said, returning to her previous thought. One of the soldiers, braver than the others, pulled her axe from the tree and tossed it underhand towards her. Camilla snatched the weapon from the air before it could fall to the snow.

"A hell of a price to pay for firewood," Cydric groused, his eyes lingering on the blood stained snow.

_________

"All I'm saying is there has to be SOME reason for it," Camilla declared as they sat around the fireplace in the sitting room which the four adventeruers had commandeered for their own. It seemed like at any moment the staff might decend and kick them out but so far the shock of the last few days seemed to be keeping the staff at bay. Camilla sipped a smoky liquor from a leaded glass tumbler and crossed her deerskin boots on the carpet before her.

"Trees don't just decide to attack cities," she continued.

"Aye, they normally have enough sense to steer clear of stone and steel," Gunir agreed.

"Why then, Donnkeubruk isn't any more offensive than any other city in the Empire I'm sure."

"Do you think the Countess is behind it?" Cydric asked. There was a sudden gasp and their eyes pivoted to a serving girl who was standing in the door, her eyes wide and whitefaced. She turned and bolted but Camilla was on her feet and across the room in a flash, seizing the girl by the elbow.

"Please, I'll lose my place if I tell," she blubbered. Camilla cocked a curious eyebrow, having only thought to dissuade the girl from speaking ill of the party to their hosts. She half dragged half guided the girl into the citing room.

"Tell us what?" Cydric asked in a patient tone. The girl began to sob and Camilla pushed her down into a chair.

"The Count's physician, he is an educated man, from Altdorf you know, he took something from the woods, something to help the count get better. That is all I know I swear!"

Tricksters and Theives: A Warhammer RP

Every so often Emmaline promised herself that she was going to knuckle down and study. Like most of her promises these occasional vows were pretty hollow, abandoned for the more attainable goals of sleeping late, drinking wine and lifting a few stray Imperials from an overburdened mark. Running around in the hold of a barge filled with gunpowder moments away from being torn apart by a corpse that had birthed a scorpion the size of a horse seemed like a particularly poignant kick in the rump from the gods to actually follow through this time. She ran along the length of the barge, screaming all but incoherently in the classical arcane tongue. Golden light spilled from her finger tips as she touched each keg of gunpowder. The effort was making her dizzy, but the imminent fear of death was an excellent motivator. She wouldn't have attempted this in her dizziest day dreams if there were any other choice. She made a circuit of the barge, breathing hard from fear and lack of recent vertical exercise. The barge groaned alarmingly as her spell took effect, settling deeper into the water. Her work done she stuck her head up to see Neil wisely fleeing from the frustrated chaos beast.

"Run to the back!" she shouted breathlessly.

"You mean the stern!" Neil yelled, wheeling around and bounding over shattered timbers towards the rear of the barge. There were shouts of alarm from the shore now as the ruckus wakened the city watch and the populace alike. The moonlit night was even punctuated by the odd crack of musket fire as watchmen or citizens decided, understandably, that the barge was under attack by the agents of Chaos that besieged the city. Emmaline was dimly aware that the stray musket balls were more threat to her and Neil than they were to the chitinous horror that was pursuing Neil across the deck. By now the Engineer had reached the rear of the barge, back against the railing. He was staring at her as though asking for instruction. Emmaline didn't have the breath to shout and wouldn't have been heard of the shriek of crushed timbers as the spider crap thing smashed its way back along the barge to finish of the young thief. As soon as its forlegs touched the step up onto the quarter deck Emmaline cast her spell, sending arcane flames into a barrel of powder beneath the decks. There was a mighty boom followed a half second later by a roar which shattered the glass on the houses to either side of the river. A great gout of smoke and fire erupted beneath the beast, stabbing upwards like a pillar of flame. The blast caught the thing just forward of center, flinging it fifty feat into the air. Its shattered carapace smoked and its legs pinnoned as it arced over the Reik like a nightmare pinwheel before crashing down on a stone quay with a crack like the gods smiting a vast lobster with a hammer. Emmaline was thrown off her feet by the blast momentarily stunned as purple white after images danced in her eyes. It occured to her that she should probably give an offering to Ranald on the next feast day that she hadn't been shreded by flying splinters. Neil was frozen with a rictus of horror on his face, clearly unable to process that the barge hadn't been blown to atoms by the blast which had, hopefully, finished off the scorpion thing. Emmaline staggered upright and pulled herself towards the hole in the deck. There was an unpleasant sound of sloshing water but when she looked down into the waist of the ship she could see that the remaining casks had the grayish hew of granite rather than the dark timber they had had before she worked the transmutation. Four kegs of gunpowder had detonated, surrounded by the stone kegs her spell had protected. An alarming amount of embers danced on top of the temporarily inert barrels and the shock of the blast had started seams. The barge only had a few minutes before she settled to the bottom of the Reik.

"Can you swim?" Emmaline asked as she crawled to Neil's side. Her ears rang prodigiously and she could hardly understand herself.

"What whim?" Neil asked, shaking his head in confusion. Emmaline pointed to thick cable, and then to the shore. Neil blinked for a moment and then nodded in understanding. He grabbed the rope and leaped into the dark waters, striking out towards the stunned onlookers on the shore. In the end they managed to haul the barge ashore before it grounded in the muck.

"We are Agents of the Order of the Fiery Heart," Emmaline lied as a squad of terrified guardsman rushed aboard halberds leveled.

"You men, get to work unloading these barrels, and douse whatever embers you see with river water," she commanded in her best Altdorf Noble accent. Emmaline was not sure what an Agent of the Order of the Fiery Heart sounded liked, but figured that was her best chance of being obeyed. The guardsmen looked shocked and confused.

"NOW YOU MEN! Do you want half the city to go up in smoke!" Neil roared in a credible imitation of a drill sergeant. That seemed to do the trick and the guards began to dump helmets full of river water onto the charred timbers around the blast site. Others began to haul up the stone kegs. Already the stone was fading back to the original timber as Emmaline's spell began to wear thin. Exhausted and emotionally spent, she sat down on the cobblestones beside Neil and watched the city guard and citizenry form a chain to begin passing up kegs of gunpowder.

"That better be worth a Tower," she muttered.

Tricksters and Theives: A Warhammer RP

"I don't think..." Emmaline began, pulling a belaying pin free and swinging it at the onrushing thug in a graceless arc. The cultist lashed out with his cudgel, luckily for the young wizard her blow had brought her enough time to stumble back out of the way, tripping on a coil of rope line and falling on her bottom. The thug was wide eyed, all but frothing at the mouth, but he had enough combat sense to turn to meet Neil before he was blind sided. Emmaline scrambled to her feet and backed to the gunnel of the barge. By now the sluggish but powerful current had pulled the barge out into midstream. If Emmaline were a heroine in a Detlef Sierck play this would be the moment where she thrust a flaming torch into the powder and heroically sacrificed herself to save the city. Touching the powder off here would spare the docks, and the walls the cultists meant to breach. Emmaline wasn't averse to being heroic, but not at the cost of her own precious skin.

"We've got to..." the deck exploded as something bloodslicked and chitionous smashed it's way up with a shower of splinters that knocked Neil and his attacker off their feet. The thing looked to be about the size of a bull, although most of that was in legs and the ruined corpse it seemed to sprout from. A tower was starting to look like a bargain for Leizbauhnor. The thing clacked to mandible which seemed somehow lodged in it's hosts legs, clapping the dead sorceress heels together in a disgusting parody of a dance.

"Uhhh," Emmaline gibbered, now utterly unsure what they had to do. Her little swarm of nails continued to sting at the thing without noticeable effect. Blowing the thing up seemed like the best option, but doing so would probably be lethal for Emmaline and, less importantly, might doom the city if the defenders ran out of powder. Worse still in a few minutes they would be close to the river gate, close enough that blowing the barge might breach the western walls opening the way for the beastmen that doubtlessly lurked for such an opportunity. The beast reared up and Emmaline lifted her hand, golden light in the shape of Sigmar's hammer blazed forth. The beast flinched back violently as though struck a blow before it realized it was trickery and Emmaline was far too wordly to use faith as a weapon.

"I need a minute!" she shouted to Neil and then bolted below deck as fast as her heaving lungs could carry her.

Tricksters and Theives: A Warhammer RP

Gunpowder had a certain smell to it, metallic and biting in Emmaline's nose. Although it wasn't a familiar scent to her, most gunpowder she had encountered being in the reeking post combustion form, the alchemical nature of it was oddly calming. The interior or the barge reeked of it, the scent oozing from the hundreds of barrels packed in the hold. Emmaline ran her hand over one of the casks that was packed tightly into the hold. The leaden seal of the manufacturers were still in place, for all the world as though the barge were on its way to Altdorf or some other port. Emmaline followed along behind Neil, mightily impressed by how he had dealt with the Norscan.

"Well we have found the powder," Emmaline observed soto voche.

"Yes congratulations," a voice drawled behind them. Emmaline and Neil whirled to find a slender looking man in middle age standing at the passage between one of the bulkheads. He was an unremarkable looking fellow, save for the fact that he was shirtless. That wasn't a good look for his gaunt and unimpressive frame, but strange growths covering his chest formed a stigmata of the ruinous powers. Emmaline was between Neil and the cultist and she turned and began to surptitously shift to the side.

"Thanks," she said evenly, thinking to give Neil a clear shot with his pistol.

"Surrender," the cultist demanded, raising a hand. The air shimmered with magic as a barrier of some sort rose between them, a bluish patch of disrupted air.

"Very well, we accept," Emmaline declared, "we will escort you to the Cathedral of Sigmar for..."

"Silence!" the apparent sorcerer roared, raising his other hand, purplish fire gathering around it. Neil's pistol cracked behind her and the shield flashed as it deflected the ball like a ceiling tile batting away hail.

"Weaklings!" the sorcerer laughed, raising his fist. Neil grabbed Emmaline by the belt and hauled her around the corner a heartbeat ahead of a blast of purplish energy that shattered the bulkhead to kindling. Emmaline stumbled backwards and raised her own hand, chanting rapidly. Deck nails began to rip themselves out of the floor, floating into the air and gathering like ferrous bees before streaking down the hallway in an angry cloud. The sorcerer yelped in surprise although the cuts and scrapes were hardly likely to be lethal. Emmaline turned and ran, bolting past Neil and up a companion way onto the deck. She crashed into the remaining guard at full speed, knocking him to the ground and careening away from the impact. She swept up a boarding axe and chopped through the painter cables with two swift hacks.

"Get away from there you bitch!" the watchman yelled, but the current of the Reik was already drawing the barge away from the dock and out into the river.