Rata Tat Tat

Shock & A.W.E. [Redux]

I, too, will admit to being weirded out by the rainbow unicorn.

...also by Ekirei's signature. Not going to lie.

Shock & A.W.E. [Redux]

There we are. Updated--I wasn't quite sure what to put for diagnostics, honestly, but high made sense for pretty much all of them. Its weakness is in its maneuverability and speed, of course. And I do have Skype, yes, I've PM'd you my information.

Blight [OOC]

Apologies on my OOC absence, I'm bad at keeping up with the chatter on occasion.

Needle

Name: Alcibiades Wystragaunt
Alias: Needle
True Name: Balbaetrigaust
Race: Pixie
Court: Unseelie by association.



Background:

Pixies. They swarm and they scrabble, scramble and screw and in the end they flutter about like moths to the greenlight before ending their brief, hectic, violent lives beneath a boot, a hand, or in the net to some lab or another. Barely fae, let alone human, without purpose or function the feral things live out their days as much as vermin as fae.

Or at least, that's how it usually goes.

No one is really sure when Needle showed up or how. It was just a name that came with some fairy dust--”From Needle, baby”--or even a girl for a night. Then it turned into a name you heard at the tavern, where run down men muttered that they heard someone “went to visit Needle” or “made a little friend”. Then all of a sudden one of the cloth merchants was paying a troll for a needle that he tucked into the brim of his cap. And suddenly, when a wyrdling hustling a merchant with a needle in his hat winds up with pincushion for eyes, Needle stopped being such a little friend.

Needle is not like other pixies, but he can't help what he is. A naturally violent temper makes him dangerous and a vicious, consuming charm draws others to him. A great patron of entropy, he draws to him anyone who can feel the allure of just letting go and uses them until there's nothing left. When they've burned out, there's always another to take their place, but his disposable friends and accomplices have bought him a surprising amount of sway and muscle when he needs it.

And he does, because word on the street is that Needle wants anything he can get his hands on that has to do with sorcery, the really old stuff. Sorcery, Alchemy, Magic, Glam, bring it to Needle and you'll get what you want for it.

No one is sure that giving it to him is a good idea, but he's more of it already than anyone guesses,

Possessions:
Needle himself possesses little. Whatever his latest clothes are worn ragged, a tiny crown worn ironically and a long, thin needle are all he tends to have on him. What he has instead are contacts, people who owe him things or hold things for him or people on his payroll. And what's theirs can, and has before, very quickly become his when necessary.

The only things he truly cares about, that he keeps for himself and hides away where no one else can watch him, are the scrolls and books about sorcery and fae magic he's managed to acquire.

Talents:
Needle is an intensely social predator, a skilled liar and an expert manipulator. He replaces empathy with desire and is very good at manipulating what others want for his own ends. As a pixie he's quick and dexterous and quiet, of course, and more than capable of going unnoticed, but his true talent is his inability to forget. His memory is eidetic, to see is to know—and he has seen more than enough alchemical tricks and odd little secrets to know more than he really ought to.

Glamer:
Needle is, of course, an adept flier, capable of controlling his own natural weight and buoyancy to impressive degrees. He's had plenty of energy to practice, pumping himself up as much with the drugs his clients use as anything else--when you're a pixie, it doesn't take much. He's also learned to do the same with others, and for brief periods of time he can, with enormous effort, tug even something as large as a troll up into the air with him.

Though he constantly explores the old magics, the old ways for something, anything that will give him the desperate edge he needs over the wretched humans, he's never had an ounce of success.

Here's an updated copy of Needle, sans extra magic. He's still looking for it even if he can't master it--he still believes it's the key to having the power to change things, and still believes that if he finds just that one little secret he'll be able to pull it all together and make it work for him.

I did take a few liberties in my post, for which I apologized--reading over the OOC thread, it seemed we were starting to congregate at this 'Boggart's Hole' establishment, and Needle would certainly be interested in a cook for some of his plans and schemes. Anything that doesn't work can be changed, of course--and his poor wyldling could always just be mistaken--but it seemed like a tidy way to get everyone properly convened.

Blight [OOC]

“Open your fucking eyes and look at me!”

The veridian alchemist's light that swung above the table sent long green shadows across the room, guttering and flickering like candlelight. It shivered and shook, blotted out here and there as the swam swung from it, crawled on it, gnawed on it, watched from it. The rest of the room was dark as ink, but the sound of fluttering wings, tiny teeth, scratching fingernails the size of pinheads made it anything but peaceful. When he finally did open his eyes, trembling, at first he thought there was nothing to see.

Then he looked down to his chest, tilting his head as much as he could with the tight cord wound around his neck, and he started stammering.

“I don't know, I swear I don't know, I'd tell you if I did, I swear I don't fucking know—”

“I want your eyes.”

The words stopped him for a moment as he tried to swallow past his bindings, tried to pull his hands free but couldn't. He finally managed it as the pixie astride his chest started walking up to his face, riding the bob of his adam's apple like a wave. The tiny points on it's little black shoes felt like pins on his skin. He opened his mouth to say something before there was a buzz of wings and a sharp pain on the bottom of his chin, a tiny piercing that forced his head back nonetheless and pushed his eyes to the dark ceiling above. Behind the light, he could see the fluttering of chitinous wings, the crawling bodies of tiny men and pinprick eyes that burned in the dark. A moment later the pain disappeared only to trace it's way up his face, dimpling it as footsteps made their way over his quivering skin with more surety than the should have had.

When the faery finally came into view, the man shivered again and stayed very, very still, afraid of what his minute captor might do if he tried to get him off. A little wasted form of a man—was it a man?—no larger than his hand, walked up his face with spider-leg footsteps until it loomed over him, astride the bridge of his nose. A white smock—dress?—hung down from its shoulders low enough to expose it's flat chest, tiny nipples, taut sternum. It ended mid-thigh where little black boots took up, scraps of leather laced with thread. Red hair hung lank to it's ball-bearing shoulders, surrounding a surprisingly pretty face, but the needle in it's hand drew his attention more even than the minute trail around it's eyes that bobbed as he breathed. The problem was he knew that face, and it didn't spell anything good.

“Did you know that changeling eyes still glow when you put them out?” It spoke lazily, almost bored, tracing the needle over the man's cheekbone to tap the bottom of his socket with the tip, a quiet smack as it tilted it's head to the side. Examining. He could see the cuts on it's shoulders and arms, dribbles of dried blood. “I've put out a lot of eyes in my day—comes with the territory, darling—but changeling eyes are my favorite. Sometimes I collect them, when I'm bored. I've pulled them out of babies, bitches and bodies, but yours are awfully damn pretty.”

He whimpered, blinking and leaving his eyes closed just a little too long before tiny lips screamed.

“I said fucking look at me!”

The pain was instant, minute, but he felt a tiny knee hit his cheekbone and sharp little fingernails hook under his eyelid to drag it, quivering, down. Surprisingly strong, for a bitty thing it's size, it's voice dropped much lower than he thought it could. The game was over, apparently—no more 'darlings'. His eyes focused on the tiny figure as it loomed over him, watched it's little fingers switch grip and raise the needle high. A normal sewing needle, like you'd find anywhere, it held it like a sword.

“If you've got nothing else for me,” it started, it's voice a vicious undercurrent, “I might as well get what I can out of--”

“She's in the Blight!”

It came out before he could stop himself, burst from his lips like the spit that dripped onto his grime-spattered face. He was shaking, eyes running circles around the tip of that needle—he couldn't even focus on it, but he spoke quickly. Anything to keep it away. “She's in the fucking Blight, I swear! We couldn't keep her anywhere else, we had to--”

“I know she's--”

“But she's on the move, don't you get it?! The goblins, man, we heard the fucking goblins were looking so we told her to head somewhere they wouldn't find her! The Boggart's Hole, that brothel up on King's and Wallace, I swear, I don't know if she's there or not but I swear--”

“And earlier you swore you didn't know where she was.”

The needle came down as Needle stood up. The junkie's howl was cut short by the rope around his neck, three tittering pixies on either side of it tugging with all their might as they hung from the table below to choke off the sound. Even while his lips turned blue, his hands scrabbled at the leather straps down the table and his body bucked trying to force his way free, his eye shined a ring of bright blue around the swiveling bobbing metal shaft.

By the time it was over—it took longer than most pixies thought to choke out a man, they had such big lungs—Needle was laughing in the air above his face, it's tiny body floating like a balloon as it's wings fluttered idly for direction.

“Stupid motherfucker!” It howled as the other pixies descended, the air in the room suddenly full of teeth and wings and clawing little hands, battering aside the weightless little crimelord in their haste to get to whatever magic-filled morsels they could scavenge out of the choking wyldling. He wriggled in the air in his mirth, the tension and effort it took to hold out for the answer releasing in a torrent even as his own kind shoved him out of way for the goodies. “Who the fuck collects eyes!”

---

Ten minutes later, crawling up through drain spout—mercifully it wasn't raining—Needle's filthy little form pulled itself free and stretched on the edge of a gutter, looking out over the town.

King and Wallace. He had a ways to go.

The Midnight Train to Nowhere (RP has already, but we are in need of more people)

How many are involved so far?

Shock & A.W.E. [Redux]

Well, that took an embarrassingly long time. Look it over and let me know if anything needs attention. The picture is an odd one, but it's got a feel I like. I'll probably swap it out when I find something I like more.

Sasha Ivanova

Name: Sasha Ivanova
Gender: Female
Nationality: Russian

Appearance: Sasha

Personality:
The world is a very binary place for Sasha; things are either important or they are not. If they are important, they are to be mastered and perfected, with no exception spared and no quarter given or asked for. If they are not, they are completely, utterly uninteresting.

War, for instance. War is both important and interesting, a dance of its own and a lethal one at that, and Nana Valikovna succeeded in planting the thought in Sasha's mind young that grew, with years of cultivation and watching the stupidity of others, into a firm sense of duty. War is important, and should therefore be perfected.

People, on the other hand, are not important. At least, 99% of people are not important, and therefore completely boring. Much of life, in fact, is completely boring to the haughty Russian, and she has no problem displaying as such. Rules that are not grounded in safety, for instance, are equally unimportant, and she disregards them almost at will with little hesitation or regard for the consequences. As much as she demands perfection, however, her narrow focus allows much of her time not spent perfecting her current obsession to be spent in lazy boredom; she smokes because she hasn't bothered to kick the habit. When she can get away with it, she drinks for fun. She could be beautiful, but she rarely bothers to comb her hair but for Important occasions, where it must be immaculate.

She is a creature of intensity and boredom in equal measure.

Bio:
Sasha wanted to be a ballerina.

Since she was little, she loved watching them dance and swirl across the stage—if she only ever saw them on the internet or on television, she dreamed of being so beautiful, so elegant and in control. She badgered her parents from the first time she saw it, wearing them down over time with the patience only a child can bring to bear until finally they relented and found an aging ballerina who would cut them a break on the price of lessons for free meals at their restaurant. Nana Valikovna took Sasha in with grudging respect for the unfailingly hard working child who demanded nothing less than perfection from herself and allowed Sasha to join in on her classes.

For years, Sasha couldn't have been happier.

And then came the fateful day that Sasha's results came in. Every child at her school had been through the stupid application tests, every last one of them had failed, so why was it that in the middle of class Nana Valikovna had to stop her music, answer her phone, and tell little Sasha that her parents were on their way with big news? All Sasha wanted was for her to turn the music back on, but her parents arrived shortly after brimming with excitement. Their little girl had passed, and passed so well that they wanted to enroll her in a special school! A school for special girls and boys like her who might have what it took to pilot an A.W.E., a robot that kept them all safe (and provided a not-insubstantial kickback to the child's family for their trouble).

Sasha, of course, had no interest in the matter, but Nana Valikovna put a hand on her shoulder and looked to her with the strongest eyes Sasha had ever seen. “Men and women fight and die so you can practice your ballet.” Said the mother of three military sons, one of whom would never come back. “You are not such a weak little thing that you would let them down when they needed you, would you?”

And if Sasha didn't care at all about her parent's excitement, if she didn't care at all about being a pilot, she knew full well that she would never be such a weak little thing in Nana Valikovna's eyes. The program was intense, as much orphanage as boarding school, and though she didn't see her parents very much in the years to come she wrote to Nana Valikovna weekly with an old black pen that took ink from a well, like they had in the movies. Even if it did get her hands dirty.

Like everything Sasha did, she poured herself into it with an obsessive, single-minded intensity and accepted nothing but perfection from herself.

It was no surprise to anyone when she received the letter to the prestigious Lunar Academy. She had earned it.

A.W.E.

A.W.E.
Designation: ULANOVA
Role: Long-Range Fire Support
Frame: Heavy (20pts)
Manufacturer: Knight
> Railgun Tech - 1 free points is given towards a single size three 'railgun' classified armament or special weapon.
> Omniscience - Up to 2 free points (cannot go below 0) given towards a 'sensor' classified support armament or special ability.
> Energy Enigma - The A.W.E. cannot equip laser or plasma weapons.

Appearance:

Armaments:
• ExRARC-1036X “Exarch” Rail Cannon – A massive implement, the current high-end production model from Knight, the Exarch Rail Cannon is a massive implement integrated on ULANOVA's left shoulder, retracted and compacted over the shoulder blade when not in use. When deployed and fully extended, it is a massive weapon built for one purpose—long distance anti-armor. Accelerating a 3.5 kg 105mm Depleted Uranium Sabot round to as close to the speed of electricity as conditions allow, it can slag even the toughest armor. It loses some of its benefits when utilized against soft or relatively unarmored targets, but it is more than capable of punching through even the toughest armor when loaded with jacketed slugs.
(Heavy Long Range Conventional, 2 pts w/ Knight Bonus)
• RFFS-4 “Valentin” .50 Caliber Minigun – The bread and butter of ULANOVA's armaments, the Valentin is a .50 Caliber minigun designed to serve as a multipurpose function. With it's standard allotment of Grade 2 Armour Piercing rounds, it serves equally well as an anti-personnel and light fortification deterrent, and it's intense rate of fire allows it to excel at cutting through massed infantry or suppressing fire. It can be loaded with a variety of ammunition types dependent upon availability and stock, but with it's 'cure all' purpose it is usually relegated to its standard load-out.
(2 Handed Middle Range Conventional, 2pts)
• SCB “Cestus” Gauntlets – When push comes to shove, the ULANOVA gets messy. Essentially little more than impact-rated shaped charges that slot into place over the ULANOVA's knuckles, these high explosives trigger when enough force strikes the plate at the fore of the unit's fist, typically during a punch. The charge is not a small one, and typically can be expected to buy the A.W.E. at least enough room to bring it's Minigun to bear. It takes almost a full three seconds for a new charge to be secured in place, however, and is a last resort more than anything. Like much of the ULANOVA's equipment the charge can be modified to match the situation, but a high explosive charge seems to have become the standard.
(1 Handed Convention Melee, High Damage, 2 pts.)

Shield Strength: Strong (6 pts)

Signature Asset:
• AAU-1-45XL “Trebuchet” Indirect Mortar – The Trebuchet is a prototype form of artillery, a teleportation unit integrated with the ULANOVA's extensive sensory and support systems. By locking on a particular location within a battlefield, either via coordinates provided by the Albatross or, more rarely, triangulated coordinates provided by external sources, the Trebuchet is capable of loading any of several tremendous charges, priming them, and teleporting them to the ideally determined location for instant deployment. Though multiple rounds have been tested and found effective, due to weight constraints the ULANOVA is typically listed to four of the cannister charges. It typically enters the fray with two massive monofilament anti-personnel cannisters, an airburst tactical mine-layer and a tremendous high-explosive charge. It is mounted on the ULANOVA's left shoulder blade and occupies much of it's back.

Sensory Units:
• OLSU “Condor” – The Condor Overland Sensory Unit is part and parcel with the ULANOVA's ability to effectively deliver it's fire support. A small but powerful high-flying sensor drone, it's entire purpose is to provide a bird's eye tactical map of the battlefield for the ULANOVA's pilot. It operates in multiple spectrums over a large area of battlefield, and if it isn't a particularly focused piece of equipment it allows many of the other integrated systems to function effectively.
(Sensory Add On, 2 pts.)
• ICID “Bright Eye” – The Bright Eye Integrated Cognitive Interference Drive is Knight's new take on defeating stealth systems. With the wealth of information already relayed via the ULANOVA's integrated drives, rather than adding another the architects of the A.W.E. decided to utilize all of them at once. By filtering the combined data of all the ULANOVA's sensory information through a matrix of preloaded information, it searches for even the tiniest irregularities and attempts to match them to known stealth behavior. If, for instance, the Condor can visually locate a unit that does not show up on it's IR scanning, the Bright Eye system flags the anomaly's coordinates. If a high definition feed comes in from the ULANOVA's main visual suite that detects even slight anomalies in the airflow of a cloaked unit, the Bright Eye system analyzes and flags it to the best of it's ability. Though it is limited by its input, combined with the rest of the ULANOVA's combat metrics it is an impressive field control device.
(Sensory Add On, 0 Pts w/ Knight bonus)

HUD Add-Ons:
• “Albatross” ASCU – The Albatross Accumulated Sensory Collation Unit is one of the newest items by Knight, an excellent innovation that essentially allows collated data from a team's input. By piggybacking onto the sensory input of the other systems involved in a battlefield, the Albatross “fills in the gaps” as it goes; additional information provided by other units is quickly added, formatted, and relayed to the Oracle targeting computer to provide optimum methods of targeting assistance.
(HUD Add-On, 2 pts)
• “Oracle” ITS – The Oracle Targeting System is perhaps the heart of the ULANOVA's performance. By analyzing movement and momentum patterns, cataloged responses and other variables, the Oracle facilitates the age old adage of shooting where they will be, not where they are. It takes into account advanced metrics such as distance to target, barriers between shell and target, ideal strike zones and optimum effect ordinance calculations.
(HUD Add-On, 2 pts)

Diagnostics:
20/23 Slots and Points Used
3 Total Energy Units
High Shield Rating
High Armour Rating
High Weapon Rating

Warhammer 40,000 faction-based roleplay.

FOR CHOAS

Blight [OOC]

I'm here, apologies on my recent absentia. I'll have the adjustments to Needle up at some point today.

Hunter (Modern Horror/Supernatural)

I'll bite, why not. I'm a closet oWoDer.

Blight [Dark Faerytale/Steampunk]

Good lord, all this time and I've only got a draft to throw up. I'll probably make some more edits, but this way you can at least tell me if the concept works. It's...a bit unorthodox.

Needle

Name: Alcibiades Wystragaunt
Alias: Needle
True Name: Balbaetrigaust
Race: Pixie
Court: Unseelie by association.



Background:

Pixies. They swarm and they scrabble, scramble and screw and in the end they flutter about like moths to the greenlight before ending their brief, hectic, violent lives beneath a boot, a hand, or in the net to some lab or another. Barely fae, let alone human, without purpose or function the feral things live out their days as much as vermin as fae.

Or at least, that's how it usually goes.

No one is really sure when Needle showed up or how. It was just a name that came with some fairy dust--”From Needle, baby”--or even a girl for a night. Then it turned into a name you heard at the tavern, where run down men muttered that they heard someone “went to visit Needle” or “made a little friend”. Then all of a sudden one of the cloth merchants was paying a troll for a needle that he tucked into the brim of his cap. And suddenly, when a wyrdling hustling a merchant with a needle in his hat winds up with pincushion for eyes, Needle stopped being such a little friend.

Needle is not like other pixies, but he can't help what he is. A naturally violent temper makes him dangerous and a vicious, consuming charm draws others to him. A great patron of entropy, he draws to him anyone who can feel the allure of just letting go and uses them until there's nothing left. When they've burned out, there's always another to take their place, but his disposable friends and accomplices have bought him a surprising amount of sway and muscle when he needs it.

And he does, because word on the street is that Needle wants anything he can get his hands on that has to do with sorcery, the really old stuff. Sorcery, Alchemy, Magic, Glam, bring it to Needle and you'll get what you want for it.

No one is sure that giving it to him is a good idea, but he's more of it already than anyone guesses,

Possessions:
Needle himself possesses little. Whatever his latest clothes are worn ragged, a tiny crown worn ironically and a long, thin needle are all he tends to have on him. What he has instead are contacts, people who owe him things or hold things for him or people on his payroll. And what's theirs can, and has before, very quickly become his when necessary.

The only things he truly cares about, that he keeps for himself and hides away where no one else can watch him, are the scrolls and books about sorcery and fae magic he's managed to acquire.

Talents:
Needle is an intensely social predator, a skilled liar and an expert manipulator. He replaces empathy with desire and is very good at manipulating what others want for his own ends. As a pixie he's quick and dexterous and quiet, of course, and more than capable of going unnoticed, but his true talent is his inability to forget. His memory is eidetic, to see is to know—and he has seen more than enough alchemical tricks and odd little secrets to know more than he really ought to.

Glamer:
Needle is, of course, an adept flier, capable of controlling his own natural weight and buoyancy to impressive degrees. He's had plenty of energy to practice, pumping himself up as much with the drugs his clients use as anything else--when you're a pixie, it doesn't take much. He's also learned to do the same with others, and for brief periods of time he can, with enormous effort, tug even something as large as a troll up into the air with him.

Though he constantly explores the old magics, the old ways for something, anything that will give him the desperate edge he needs over the wretched humans, he's never had an ounce of success.