POOHEAD189

The Sinful Stars

"Grim tidings, I'm afraid." Orion stated. He kept his face neutral, or did his best to. But the farmer could see a regret and unease on his stern visage. Ragnar was about to speak but Annika mentally told him to keep a lid on it. Hearing his strange tongue in these strange times could cause panic and grant Orion a lack of trust. The Knight looked over the fields, to the distant farmsteads across the horizon of the fading sun.

"Have you not heard any of the fighting?" Pentecost asked.

"Yes sir, but the Duke promised us protection. We've done everything he's asked, he-"

"Won't get here in time." Orion finished. He looked at the man, and realized they looked somewhat similar. Perhaps a decade apart in age, but with a similar build and chin. Maybe if he had not chosen to become a Knight, or if he was born in a lesser bloodline this would be him. He was suddenly glad that wasn't the case, for this man had a bumpy few weeks ahead of him. "In less than 12 hours, these raiders will roll in on Tolth and this is the first place they hit. I need you to gather your family and follow me. If you can send someone to go and warn your neighbors, that would be appreciated."

The farmer took a step back, clearly wrestling pragmatism with surprise. Orion had seen it before. Peaceful men who couldn't believe they were experiencing tragedies or battles one would hear from news or rumors. For a moment, the Knight felt as if the man was about to speak against him, gathering his wits to argue. They didn't have time for such nonesense, and he drew his sword, pointing it at the frightened serf.

"Do as I say!" He roared, eyes flaring. Even his cybernetic eye seemed to gleam. The threat of violence all of the sudden seemed very tangible to the serf, even if it wasn't necessarily from the Vuldroks. "I am Sir Orion Pentecost, scion of the House of Hawkwood. Knight of the Known Worlds and Warrior of the Company of the Pheonix! Go now save your family and people with me or I will smite you where you stand!"

Needless to say, in short order the retinue of Orion grew tenfold within the hour. Worried men and frightened women and children congregated among them at the crossroads that fed from the greater city of Tolth into the farmlands. Orion organized the families into units, keeping the most influential families at the fore in case they needed to speak to any noble at the drop of a hat. When darkness fell and the lights within the trees grew fierce, they marched into the greater city of Tolth, what had to be hundreds of peasants behind bold Orion and his Confessor, with Ragnar muttering to himself all the while.
@Penny

Warhammer Fantasy: From Small Beginnings...

I'm still here, though I'd like to make a few edits to my character sheet in a way if you'd allow. @Jb

If not, I'll still play.

The Sinful Stars

It was an off-putting but not innocuous feeling to suddenly be able to understand the Vuldrok. Orion wasn't a hard man, at least when it came to his allies. But he was wondering just how many powers Annika would pluck out of the sky. He turned to the woman, ignoring the barbarian for now. "He is at my mercy?" He echoed, and turned back to the Vuldrok. "That goes without saying."

"Fell Huscarl," The Vuldrok said, clearing this throat and shifting in his bonds gently. The effort brought forth his breathy odor and it grated on Orion's nerves. "Let me serve you. You have spared my life, and therefore I am under your dominion until you see fit to release me. My Gods demand that I-"

"No," Orion said, grim of face. "I haven't decided not to kill you yet, and you think I'll take you as a bloody squire?" Even without her gifts, Annika would be able to see his anger and disgust mounting. "A heathen as you, with foreign Gods and the blood of innocents on your hands? Who comes to my homeworld and threatens it with slavery and death?" The Knight grabbed the Vuldrok suddenly by the hair on his scalp and looked as if he was about to cut his throat then and there.

"No! Orion, hold!" Sister Annika cried, and she placed a hand on his arm to soothe him. He felt her presence entering his mind, for it caught his attention in a more calm manner. Still, she spoke aloud. "He can get us past his kin," she reminded him. "And if he serves you he may be able to repent for his sins. All who seek the Pancreator's light may gain salvation. You should know that with more clarity than most Knights, I can gather."

For a long, tense second, his arm quivered as he was at an impasse, until he reluctantly pulled his sword away. "Very well," The Knight remarked. "You may join us. But do not over announce yourself when we meet others of my world. They will not take kindly to you, and less of me for keeping you. You will do as I say when I say it, and if you pull your weight, you'll be rewarded with what bounty the Pancreator awards me. But if you displease me, I'll release your soul from your body."

The Vuldrok seemed elated, unintimidated by the Knight. Perhaps it was because most Barbarians had very little self-preservation, or perhaps he was very confident in his skills. Either way, when his bonds were cut he merely rubbed his wrists. "Thank you, master. I will serve you well. But we must hurry, before night falls. Tomorrow morning there will be an attack, and this night we-...er they gather to ready themselves. The forest will be thick of them."

"Lead the way then, just know if you lead us to any patrols, you will die first."

Two hours passed as the three slunk around the tufts of ancient grass and gnarled trees that dotted the end of the woods. Thrice they hid from patrols, keeping themselves low and quiet. Each time Orion looked at Sister Annika to see if she was well and hidden, only to see she was looking at him and they would both turn away. True to his word, Ragnar kept his oath and kept the group out of danger until the sun had nearly been swallowed by the horizon, and they waded out of the treeline onto pastureland, where a family of serfs were herding a drove of cattle peacefully.

"Father! Father there are people!" One of the small boys cried. It looked as if there were four young children out there to help shepard the animals or till the fields. Another boy's grip slackened on the hoe he carried, and grown man looked perplexed. Orion Pentecost could not blame him.
@Penny

The Sinful Stars

"That is a grave accusation," he told her, helping her up. "Yet he feel it is also likely. The attacks have become more frequent as of late. The rumors indicate they'll soon have an invasion base on the planet."

He wished he could claim he knew exactly what to do with the information. For now it simply complicated things. He wondered if this had anything to do with the recent pagan rebellions springing up in the forested hills of Tolth. Even if they did, it wasn't his mission, he reminded himself. Even if the Duke was a conspirator, or if one of his court members was a conspirator, which of them would the Baron truly back? The rightful Duke whom he hates, or a traitor to his ranks?

"Will you forestall my duty?" He whispered in a prayer, gazing into the knolls of the wood. Now more than ever, it was not the time to dally. Orion grabbed his sack and took out an extra linen shirt, ripping the hems off to use as rope as he tied up the unconscious Vuldrok. "I believe you," He told her as he ripped the cloth. "But others might not. The paranoid Duke would likely soon as burn you than listen to you, and me for that matter."

With a grunt, he lifted the tied barbarian up. Pancreator, he'd rather it had been a Kurgan. At least members of the Caliphate bathed, not to mention they were leaner in physique. Their women were said to be beautiful as well. Idly he wondered if Sister Annika had any Kurgan in her blood from ages past, but he dismissed the thought as soon as it showed and hoped she hadn't read his mind. "Let us be off before the sun dips and we're shot in the dark."

@Penny

The Elder Scrolls: Legacy

The birds sang their songs in the well manicured trees of the city Bruma, uncaring as the Landstriders were of the off architecture and the ordered way about life. It was strange to one of Dax's nature, even compared to other Argonians. Granted, he could see the benefits of a walled city and a structured way of living, but it also gave a predictability that any potential enemy could turn to their advantage. His people had long fought off the Dunmer by stealth and irregularity in their tactics.

Not everything was a warzone, nor was it all survival of the fittest. He needed to continue to remind himself of that in order to coexist with non-Argonians. Not all life was under threat... at least, initially. But it all devolved from there, with simple time.

With ne'er a clatter, he made his way off the roof of the new guild he had found himself a member of. Anyone who saw his landing would think him menacing, if not a threat. Indeed a woman squealed at his sudden appearance and a man hustled her away, looking at him with suspicion. He'd gotten used to it, and even enjoyed it in his more humorous moments, though those were few and far between. As of now, it was his day-to-day.

Striding out of the alley, he kept his weapons out of his hands but they were ever present. Once he was amid the crowd however, even he blended in. All walks of life seemed to congregate here. It always amazed Dax how much of a melting pot the other provinces were. He did think Blackmarsh should remain isolationist, but every now and then he wondered how it would be if his homeland could have a multitude of outsiders without having them succumb to disease, or have them invade with the intention of slavery.

Mer and Men mingled, laughing and trading spices and other goods. Young girls danced and flitted through the streets, giggling even at Dax. A man tried to halt him to sell him fish, but Dax didn't even pay attention to the fellow. Making his way out of the market, he found himself among the outskirts of the town where the guards strode about and travelers entered the city. He decided he would wait there and watch. Perhaps on the walls to have a better view and to keep himself from driving others away.

As he climbed the inner stairway, one of the guards, a man with a square jaw halted him. "Hold, citizens aren't allowed up there." He remarked, and Dax paused. "I'm not a citizen. I am one of the Adventurer's from the guild. Am I still not permitted?" He didn't smile because it usually put people off when he showed his teeth.

The man held clear suspicion, and he informed Dax to await as he went off to find his superior officer. Within minutes another man appeared, with a shield emblazoned with the symbol of the city. "Ah yes, you." He said, recognizing Daixanos from the reports of him entering the city days ago. "I've been wanting to meet you. What interest do you have on the walls?"

Little did Dax know, it was the start of a mutually beneficial relationship.

The Sinful Stars

The Knight wasn't entirely sure what just transpired, but he trusted her so far. He looked to the men and then back to Annika, and gave a nod. "Stay down," he whispered, and hefted his shotgun. He could feel her gaze on his back as he held the gun, knowing shooting them with it could likely call forth a multitude of other Vuldroks. But one look from him showed her he had a plan.

He stepped carefully and slowly as the men conversed, two of them on the left beside the stream and the other on their right, back to Orion. He made it close to ten meters before the talking one noticed him, and he went from jovial to afraid just in time for Orion's shotgun butt to strike him in the head, knocking him out cold. The other two heard the thump and turned, one still urinating and the other with his pants still down.

"I could have gone my life without seeing that," He said to them, and when they reached down to lift their trousers, or potentially to grab weapons, Orion raised his shotgun barrel in warning. That stopped both of them in their tracks. Standing there, Orion could see the Xenophobia of these raiders. Even if they weren't butchers of serfs or standing there with their genitals out, they had a wild, savage look to them. Ungroomed and stinking of blood and vinegar.

The two raiders looked at one another, their hands still above their waists for a moment, but both close to realizing that if he were to shoot one of them, the report would echo across the forest. At that moment, Sister Annika bore witness to what made a Knight such as Orion so dangerous. To everyone's surprise in but a moment, he dropped the shotgun. In less than a second, without halting to process, he grabbed his sword and ripped it out of his sheathe.

Both of the Vuldrok's were mortally wounded before the shotgun hit the tough grass, making an 'X' slash that cut the throat of the left one and tore off apart of the right raider's face. Save for their blood gurgles, they were silent kills. Orion casually grabbed the left man's shirt to keep his corpse from splashing into the stream as it appeared it was about to.

"Was that sufficient?" he called to the Confessor.
@Penny

The Sinful Stars

Orion wasn't nearly as light footed, but he had a certain deadly grace to him as he moved through the woods. He leaped and halted as if his considerable bulk was a boon rather than a hindrance in how he made his way through difficult terrain. Most knights were one of two ways; polished or brutal. He was a step in both worlds. Brutal in terms of looks, but polished in noble authority.

"I feel-" He said as she took another step, her leg disappearing under the stream when the step was far deeper than she thought. He caught her forearm. "-much safer now that you're here to keep me safe." There was a grin on his handsome face, and he pulled her back up onto the shallow end. There was a log to the right that encompassed the stream.

"I'll do my best to help keep you safe." He promised, trudging out of the river as she nimbly made her way to the log. Her explanation on her duties were sound enough. He'd already known most of it, but it was good to hear that Priests of her order didn't differ intensely with other Confessors.

"I can't tell if we're doing well so far." He admitted snidely. He pulled against his shield strap to keep it steady as he crossed the log behind her.

"I think we're doing grand," He said, and he couldn't tell if she was serious or not. "All as the Pancreator wills it."

There were raised voices east of them, and they both stopped to look at one another, and then find refuge in a copse of bushes. He didn't need to place a finger to her lips. The forest might be unusual to her tastes, but he had the sense her survival instinct was on par with his.

Three burly raiders appeared out of the treeline, laughing and arguing in their strange tongue. Their speech halted and started in a way Orion couldn't begin to pattern, but he didn't care. Two of the three men unlaced their primitive trousers and stood by the stream to urinate. The third stood watch, though only at the basest sense of the word. He seemed too busy speaking to the other two.

Sir Orion unsheathed his sword a mere inch and looked to Sister Annika, his eyebrow raised questioningly.
@Penny

The Sinful Stars

Briefly, Orion felt disturbed at what had just happened. Priestess though she may be, he could understand why the Orthodox faiths found Eskatonics to be mystical and strange. What happened here seemed to be blatant witchery, but then again... could he not say it was just as heretical to be granted his cybernetic eye? She had saved his life in this instance, and he'd not forsake her for his paranoia. "Yes," he agreed, plucking a leaf out of her hair. "But let us rejoin fully when we escape these woods."

He threw his shield into the air once Annika was clear, and banged it against the branch. Twice he threw it, and finally the shotgun fell into his strong, waiting hands. Almost as soon as the firearm was in his grip, he began to march. "The Vuldroks were stragglers and scouts. The main force would have attacked Tolth proper, and no doubt they would have been repelled again. But that still leaves a few hundred of them between us and holy civilization, if we're unlucky. Let us pray the forest is too thick for us to be found."

He'd seen a better portion of the landscape than the Confessor had when they had plummeted, the strip of forest they were in was, at his guess, about 20 kilometers away from the nearest settlement. If the kept a steady pace, they could be there before nightfall. He'd almost forgotten that it was still early morning. Bold of the Vuldroks to make a night attack. They barely had technology that could match tech level 4, save for what they scavenge.

Towering pines and sharp brush covered the landscape, mist covering what little visibility they had left for more than a hundred yards. There were strange clearings like the one they had been in dotting every kilometer or so, as well. Orion's practical mind told him that they had been made from some power grids that had since been removed, but his gut had a different notion. Pagan practices were often performed in such places.

He took point, wading through the brush as he would a crowd of hapless commoners; with strength and mastery. Though he made sure to stay close to the Sister. There was an atypical quality to her that he couldn't quite get a beat on, though she likely thought the same as him. He decided to break the silence as he helped her step over a small area of quill-like leaves unharmed. "I confess I'm not used to a Confessor...I didn't mean to grant that pun but it fits my cumbrous thoughts. Do you simply watch me as I slay in the name of the Pancreator, or do you hear my life's confessions?"
@Penny

The Sinful Stars

Orion lay upon the ground, a broken stick behind his head and his body aching more terribly than it had in months. After a long tenuous moment he opened his eyes to look up at the sky. It was by the grace of the Pancreator that either of them survived, much less both of them. Perhaps they did have a chance of doing the impossible in this district. "I was going to say something similar," he croaked, responding to her thought.

He desperately wanted to remain unmoved, out of fear of finding something broken as much as exhaustion. But he stubbornly lifted himself to a sitting position. Annika would see a few blood streaks across his cheek and face, but otherwise he seemed fine save for the leaves in his military cut hair. A swift pain entered his lower back for a brief instant as he rose to his feet, but within seconds it was merely a thrumming pain. The worst was in his neck, but he could move his head as it was a secondary concern. Most of his injuring were probably musculature in nature. Pulls and inflammation, etc.

He held his hand out to his Confessor, and slowly helped her to get to her feet when she could. "Are you not glad you decided to come with me?" He asked with a closed lipped smile. Groaning, he rubbed his neck as he looked about for his weapons. His sword and shield had stayed strapped to him, but his shotgun had been in his hands. He lamented it could be a mile away, but the sharp eyes of his Confessor pointed upwards, and a dozen feet in the air, the weapon hung by a branch with the firearm's strap. As they contemplated on how to best get it, a twig snapped across the clearing.

Only holy providence kept Orion's senses so keen and his reflexes ready. He turned, bearing his shield aloft and pulling Annika close as ozone and and a crack erupted in the air. Her nose poked into the side of his neck as the lasblasts struck his shield, slapping like a hand over water as the weapons continued to discharge. "Stay low," He told her, and untangled her from him as he charged the source of the laser fire. The greater vantage point showed two Vuldrok raiders, wielding axes and laser pistols. Their hair was both wild yet carefully braided in intricate ways.

Only one laser shot made it into one of Orion's armored legs, but he grunted through the flash burn and moved his shield perfectly in unison with his sword, guarding as the blade fell over the first Vuldrok's hand, cutting it off at the wrist. Shrieks of pain and violence filled the small clearing in the towering forest. Amazingly to one who had never seen a Vuldrok before, the one that had lost his hand still swiped with his axe. Orion had fought their like before and had the frame of mind to parry the chop with his sword, sliding his blade past the beard of the axe into the raider's neck.

He spun, more out of desperation than nimbleness to keep the worst of the next lasers off of his form, a superheated beam nearly cutting off some of his shoulder muscle. Luckily it was only a graze, the next moments filled with a chopping axe and a sword and shield working in the sunlight like a strange dance that ended with the Vuldrok split down the middle from navel to nape. When Orion finished the move, his blade and knee was on the ground in a pose that looked almost as if in prayer, just as the Vuldrok raider toppled noiselessly.

"Forgive me, Sister, for I have taken life." He breathed as he regained his footing.
@Penny

The Sinful Stars

The Knight sat opposite to her as the crew began to prepare for their departure. He wasn't certain if she was keeping something from him, but in the end it didn't matter. A Confessor was what he needed, and she was nothing if not willing. "Very good sister." He said, placing his weaponry on the seat beside him in easy reach. Unless he misread her and she worked for a secret occult order, he likely didn't need to worry about her taking any of his weapons for personal use during the flight.

The runt shuttle lifted off in short order, thrumming as if alive and rising into the sky with only a short strain before they were off, flying northwest and steadily gaining speed. They would make their arrival before noon on the morrow. He saw Annika resting her head, and he took a cue from her and did the same. He'd need sleep to survive long enough to curse the Baron's name.

His hand coiled into a fist at his blasphemous thinking, and Sister Annika would likely notice and increased frequency in his breathing as he berated himself for his thinking. The Baron was his master by divine mandate, whether he liked it or not. To question him was to go against his Knightly code, and as the shuttle reached the coastline, he wondered just how far he would fall if he continued to survive these missions. Perhaps it was better to die with his soul intact rather than live and be damned.

The flight was relatively uneventful. Their arrival was the antithesis of that lull in time, as Orion would hear clamor in the front of the shuttle for a brief interval just prior to a flashing red light that awoke anyone in the back who was asleep. Suddenly, there was a depressurization and Orion's ear's popped painfully. He could barely hear the muted warning by the pilot of Vuldrok Raiders.

There was a prevalent juxtaposition between the Priestess and the Knight as they both went about preparing without delay, Orion checking his weapons as Sister Annika need only to stand at attention. "Combat landing!?" Orion yelled over the noise of the air. In his squawker, he would hear the pilot's reply.

"I'm not landing. Combat drop."

Sister Annika cursed, but Orion simply steeled himself and pumped his shotgun loudly with one, strong hand. The other grabbed a landing suit to prepare himself.
@Penny