pugbutter

The Black Undeath

We could always have a Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser thing going on if you wanted to maintain being a relatively warrior-centric dude (and/or being a stronger moral compass, though your app leaves it deliciously ambiguous how easy the desertions were on Theon). I hope you're not leaving it entirely to me, but if you want my input, at the very least you being a warrior/knight gives us an immediate opportunity to know each other, since guards may or may not be stationed at the keep, and since we may sleep in the same barracks while we're on rotation. Either way we could be flatmates without any objection from me.

The Black Undeath

Bro that'd be sick! I like that they'd end up as foils to each other in the beginning: both did some bad shit to protect themselves, both circumstantially, but their personalities would clash in an interesting way.

The Black Undeath

Right, I'm the slightest bit confused cuz it seems you guys all chose Cartelom on your own, rather than the GM giving you such direction. So is it mandated that we write apps which place us all in the same city (with more diverse backgrounds as we see fit, of course), or is it coincidence, right? lol

Well it'll be neat if other people join Tarne and we have two/several narratives running simultaneously. But right now I'll just accommodate whatever the GM wants to see.

☀ THE DEVOURER CYCLE — Act I ☀

Just to clarify: if you see someone post in the Characters tab without having submitted his app in OOC first, it's because I accepted his app through PM's (or through Discord). If you haven't been accepted yet then please post here as is the usual. Thank you~

You may now post, of course. And here's a bump.

I'm testing the waters for an Antiquity-inspired (early Iron Age, mostly pre-Roman) Fantasy RP.

Bumping with the OOC link roleplayerguild.com/posts/4902965

@Hank@BiffleChump@Random Kitty@flowersrgr8@Andreyich :D

The Black Undeath

will change Tarne to another city if staying there would mean being too distanced from the other players. i'm getting the impression that we start in different places and end up converging, though?

The Black Undeath

Name: Jethec Ardozhian

Sex: Male

Appearance:

This man, of average height and meaty build, wears his hair in long, greasy ropes, but his face neatly shaved.<br>He has doughy cheeks, wormy lips, a lump of a nose, and mean, hollowed eyes.

Age: 34

Fighting Style(s): Jethec ain't exactly acquainted with the jousts and melees of song. In fact he doesn't really like to humor "foes" at all, but prey, who did not know that he was there til the boys had already struck. He feels naked standing in open formation with the other soldiers. But he has received barely-adequate sword and crossbow training via the city watch's captains, improving upon what he had already known of these weapons. He can win, but he'll have fought dirty to do so; he makes impromptu weapons of the terrain and also hides weapons on his person. Dirt, foliage, coins, nearly anything can give him an edge in the right scenario.

Equipment: His crossbow, quarrels, sword (a falchion), hauberk, and kettlehat are all standard-issue. He also carries a small warhammer, useful in a pinch as a tool as well as a weapon. But Jethec wears his own bracers, his own boots (well broken in, and softer in the soles), as well as his own lockpicks and poignard. The knife is a good deal more sophisticated than the rest of his kit, featuring both engravings and a precious metal hilt.

Biography: Wulcis was a relatively insignificant member of House Ostogard; a third or fourth son, maybe of a cadet branch. He could not expect a big inheritance; an estate; an esteemed position like general or castellan or guildmaster among his father's cronies. Wulcis had only a suit of armor, a big fucking sword, and a nonchalance about the honor and esteem of his house. Being so equipped, he seemingly had no choice but to humiliate his father and tarnish the family legacy, and he just so happened to take to banditry as his method of choice. His petty nobility protected him from the wrath of the emperor and his corrupt court, just as his steel protected him from blades and arrows, so Wulcis took to terrorizing the roads of his own brother's shire. He also gathered more misfits along the way, adding them to his handful of house knights. This is how Jethec, technically, came under the employ of a nobleman, a fact he keeps ready for anyone fool enough to think that he will tell the whole truth. (Everyone had to forget someone, backstab someone, leave someone behind to make it past the walls.)

The Undeath struck on one such a day, of sitting in the mud along a little road a few days out from Tarne, waiting for caravans and the odd pilgrim. The whole band made it to the city in time, having been warned by the sight of a courier, still bleeding, racing past their ambush, even ignoring their bows nocked and knives drawn. Something far deadlier than they must have been giving chase, they realized in good time, that their predation seemed of so little consequence to this man. Well, Wulcis of House Ostogard was already quite infamous in Tarne, and he and the fellows accompanying him were all cut down when the guards cornered them in some tavern or other, that big sword catching on the chandelier. But Jethec, and the other clever ones, they absconded down their alleys of choice, trickling back into the crowds of refugees. They laid low, picked up honest work and some alibis. Most of these men are still kicking around Tarne today, pretending they don't have a past.

It's well and good to be a nice guy while the going is easy. But when the king orders the gates shut, when more food has been eaten and shat out by the day, when the city runs dry of even basic amenities, a man's neighbors sour faster than milk in the sun. They will always—always—choose their families over their friends; former drinking buddies and even war-comrades will eat each other, given enough days of staring at a wall waiting for death. Thus, every smart tenement employs a featherfinger from among its residents: a man (or two) to keep the whole block that slightest bit better-fed than it would be without. Jethec is one such mercenary. When the city is doing well for itself he patrols its walls and alleys as a town watch; he keeps order in the streets, and cleans them of the riots, the other thieves. But in lean times he joins their ranks, breaking into the same storehouses and supply depots he is paid to keep free of such vermin. Quite convenient, in its way. Jethec can relive the old days of taking what he wants, when it suits him; collect an honest ration (and hurt the competition) when it don't. Some things never change. Long as he don't get caught. Maybe a jackal can eat lettuce when enough of his ribs are poking through but you can't teach him to like it.

Tarne, meanwhile, rides the winds of change. The chant on the streets tells of conspiracies from the castle. Expeditions leaving the cities, looking to end whatever necromancer or great demon had summoned this invasion, erasing the plague for good. Some men stand in line to volunteer; others, like Jethec, are "volunteered" on their own behalf. Seems bad luck don't change much neither.

"DEVOURER": Bronze, Blood, Betrayal

@Danelaw@Mr Irony II@Kalleth Took a while, but if y'all haven't died of old age yet ... 😎 roleplayerguild.com/posts/4902965

☀ THE DEVOURER CYCLE — Act I ☀

𒀸𒅕𒌅

Census

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☀ THE DEVOURER CYCLE — Act I ☀

Character Sheet (The Bare Essentials)

• Name:
• Sex: (There are only two genders. :^))
• Age:
• Appearance: (Use a written description AND/OR an image file at your leisure. Please see the guidelines on image use and be absolutely certain that your image matches the tone of the game.)
• Skills & Talents: (Just a list of things the character boasts above-average skill at. Nothing fancy. As the GM I can also approve a hidden "surprise" or two via PM, as long as players show rapport and do not abuse this privilege for deus ex machina.)
• Traits: (A couple of single-word personality descriptors. Don't go overboard here; we still want to meet the guy IC.)
• History/Biography: (This is the important part. Write as decent of a short narrative as you can, even a self-contained short story if possible, according to the character himself. That is to say: feel free to lie, exaggerate, threaten, insinuate, ... or even, I dare say, tell the truth. As long as the contents are not flagrantly unbelievable, as long as all of it seems at least plausible, it will be accepted, assuming it follows all other guidelines.)
• Allegiances: (These, again, are listed according to how the character presents himself at the start of the game. These can be untrue, or they can change over the course of the game. List them in descending order: a pantheon, any specific patron-gods, race/nation, then tribe, then a specific leader or ruling class, as applicable.)
• Rank: (This is either "CHIEF" or "RETAINER." Leave this blank if you're unsure or if you do not mind filling either role as a need arises.)

Character Sheet (Example: Swidda Shadehand)

Most men are old when they become a burden unto others. Swidda was still young. Most, when they are not maimed in battle, are taken with disease and feebleness in their waning years. Swidda lost his body to the mountains, to the elements; really, to the land itself and the gods which govern it. He carried a square shield on his back and an axe and a sword on his waist. His body was strong and beautiful under its warpaint. He did as all hale-bodied youths aspire which is to join a war party, winning wealth and territory for his struggling community. So, equipped with good bronze, trained and led by a very decent captain, they took to the Thraxians, the rival tribes there, in search of their wants. Salt came first, as winter was nigh and there would be nothing to forage until the evergreens beared fruits again, but mead, iron, tools, anything the southern empires would buy the warband could bear to haul back over the peaks. Only they found no liquor, or tools, or metals precious and otherwise. And winter had come early, from the north, as a sort of short-lived raiding party much like their own. First they saw it through the boughs, a bubbling black ambush sliding down the sky like pitch. They smelled its stinging sweetness; it prickled their necks. Before long they were buried, huddling around a tiny fire they couldn't keep lit, burning their oily meat rations when there was no more dry wood left to scrounge. Swidda never saw an enemy, never mind slayed one. He also never saw some of those men again; they did not walk out of the blizzard with the rest, anyway. But they must have survived if he could, even as his toes went black, his fingers next; even as the snow sucked the vigor from his body and a dreadful peace swept over his soul. What had he done to deserve this abject end? He had a good idea, until he made it through the white hell, until he felt warmth and light again and needed only sacrifice a few digits for the privilege. It was less obvious then. Today, in the better wisdoms of his seasoned years, his experience in the mountains feels far less like punishment than it once did. He was robbed of his most conspicuous blessings, certainly, but has uncovered others since. He cannot help but feel these days that that storm saved him, in its way; it stole the swiftness in his stride, and the hardiness of his hands, and even the tips of his ears and nose, but in some useless skirmish or other he would surely have lost his mind, too, and his mind has proven a far sharper gift than any limb. On the wrong side of the mountains, taken unto another tribe's land, unable to fight or to forage, unable even to rise from his bedding once he was placed there, Swidda had only books and stories for company through his many, many moons of healing still to come. And the books he could not even read. But time was on his side, and the sages of this village had taken to their precocious guest, who the mountains had changed. While he recovered he was able to learn the dialect as it is scratched into stones, scribbled onto slabs of wax and clay. He could never swing a sword again, he could barely pick up a stylus with the fingers he had left, but the more wisened tribesmen must have seen in him that same art which was once buried under his muscles and weapons; unless they simply pitied him. Whatever the case, when Swidda's body returned from the Thraxians he was sure that it had shed its fierceness like a snake its old skin. All notions of cruelty and violence had gone out of his life, and the sages had to have seen a potential in him for healing the world, for teaching it, for bettering its understanding of itself. Alas that they were wrong, in the very end; war returns to the hills, and before very long all men begin to obsess over it. Swidda had returned to his first people, the one which sired him, a few years after this experience, when he was strong enough again to make the journey back through the daggered hills. They were pleased to see him again, and pleased moreover that the loss of his strength had not ruined his spirit as well. For generations Swidda served this community of old and continued his learning under their own seers and scholars and poets. He expected to die here as he had lived in youth. But he remembered well his debt to the ones who had saved him, too, and planned to return there someday already. Until the Nhirians came he was even slated to become a druid. But the men who would have elected him are gone now. Only a few have scattered into the Thraxians who may still remember their names, who honor their sacrifices, including a certain gentle sage. He has returned, if under mournful circumstances, to aid the Eioni, intent on compensating the ones who nursed him back to life all those decades ago; to help them find peace, if peace is possible, and avert them of the fate which befell his first people. The sons rule now where once the father reigned; Gederik is chief, and he pays well, in companionship and beer, for the stories Swidda can tell of his forebear's courage and kindness. The two have become dear friends. Young tribesmen cannot remember Swidda's first visit to this place, but he can never forget. This time he won't run away; if there is even anywhere left to run by the time the Eioni have fallen. The same scourge comes to annihilate them which has already annihilated Swidda's own people, made servants and corpses of them far to the east of the venerable mountains. Can he survive this war without losing all that he holds dear a second time? What else will he have to sacrifice to finally know a true and lasting peace?	Tall and supple stands this sage of the Eioni peoples, like wheat bowing to the wind. Gaunt of countenance and humorless of demeanor is he, barding himself of dark and rough-hewn robes. He wears no jewelry, and while speaking he hides his ruined fist behind his back or in the recesses of his sleeves, striking a scholarly pose but also hiding the mangled flesh from the vanities of others. Other parts of him are said to have been kissed by the same rot, although no witnesses—including his wives, goes the gossip—can claim to have seen it themselves. He does walk with a heavy limp, however. Unlike most Thraxians he keeps his whole face shaven. His straight steel mane he meticulously brushes for knots and lice. Age: 58 Skills & Talents: Swidda was a warrior in youth. Though he can no longer fight he remembers well the tactics and practices which kept his fighting-fellows alive. His advice in war goes unheard nowadays, or unspoken, but he could serve any chieftain well at the rear of a battle. Swidda is a practiced diplomat and negotiator. Swidda reads, although he cannot write; he recites well the memories of his peoples, although no songs will be written about his own life. He tends a garden. Small animals get nearer to him than most, sensing a gentleness in his weathered and weary spirit. Traits: Gentle; Nurturing; Thoughtful; Indecisive; Fearful; Tormented Allegiances: The Angaturiz peoples; The Eioni peoples; the Acani tribe; Gederik, its chief. Rank & Role: RETAINER. Swidda serves Chief Gederik of the Acani tribe as a scribe, an advisor, and a diplomat.

Assassination Form

• Contractor: (On whose behalf has this assassination been organized? Who wants someone dead?)
• Operative: (If a different person) (Who will actually be carrying out the assassination?)
• Primary Murder Weapon:
• Misc. Weapons, Tools, & Equipment: (Including any camouflage/disguises)
• Plan Outline: (Roughly describe the sequence of events as it has been planned between the assassin and his master IC. When and where will it happen? Any variables that have been accounted for? Is evidence being hidden, or a drop weapon being planted? Do you have to slip past a guard patrol route or a locked door? The more thorough this section is, the likelier the plan is to succeed.)