Shienvien

The Prophecy

Jordan Forthey

The stranger halted, first turning his head to look at him, and then facing him fully.
"You think you know so much, assuming that I have someone to meet or that you could be useful in the event I was meeting someone..." The mysterious figure's movement had changed again. It was now ... stalking. Yes, stalking was an apt descriptor. Like a cat closing in on a sparrow. So, he was appraising him? Preparing to attack, and just stalling with his words until he can find the best angle?
Jordan's eyes moved from the figure, to the horizontally poised studded staff, to the narrow passage between the two residential houses the stranger had trying to flee into - he was pretty much still out in the wider street himself, and back to the figure who was now approaching, rather than distancing himself from him. Half-instinctively, half because his training told him he probably should, he took a step back at this point, and carried his weight over to that back foot. He had not let go of his sword's grip after the stranger had grabbed him and insisted he did not know anything, and still he kept it there.
"I have no interest helping you, your master, or the law, but you would know this--" the stranger rushed him; as a response, Jordan did the only thing he had the time and mind to attempt, and abruptly twisted his torso to the right while lifting his right foot for another step back, and this time to the left, so his feet formed a line one behind the other.
He had reacted as soon as he saw the stranger begin to move, from what had seemed to be quite far away, yet he couldn't quite finish even this comparatively quick maneuver. Though, he wasn't hit in the chest, and the staff instead made contact with his triceps. It seemed like enough force that, had it hit his upper arm full-on, rather than glancingly, it might have cracked bone, and even now it probably left a nasty bruise, even through the sleeve. Pain radiated both up and down his arm. (He had been hit in the upper arm ... his shoulder he could understand, but why did his wrist hurt?)
Even before his right foot had made contact with the ground again, the stranger had gone into a strange flip ... with his staff still in hand ... and landed to what was now his right side, back on the street they had first started out on.
Without wasting any more time, he finally drew his sword, baring all of its ninety-three centimeter blade to the sunlight, which reflected off the refurbished, but meticulously sharpened and cleaned weapon. His right hand felt slightly numb now. His left hand joined the right on the sword's grip as he quickly diagonally retreated three more steps, watching the stranger. His heart was beating hard.
The stone wall of the closest off-white building was now right behind his back, the closest corner of the building at an arm's length to his left. Well, there would be no flipping past him, unless the stranger wanted to faceplant the wall... The stranger who now undoubtedly was not a normal person. Too fast. Wardens could make themselves unusually fast, right? Fast and resilient. If the stranger had been any closer, or telegraphed his moves any less, Jordan knew he'd have gone down, no questions. Had the stranger wanted to whack him over the head when he had grabbed him ... well, he'd have been done. If the stranger actually gets close to him ... or uses some kind of trickery, he is done, no questions about it. He had picked someone who was too much superior to him indeed.
"--If you really knew anything." Well, he thought he had discovered quite a lot by now, at least...
"Shoot the messenger, will you?" he half-shouted, half-said. Maybe if he keeps speaking, the stranger might stall a bit? What now ... prepare to dodge? He must not be let close. Jordan carried his weight over to his right foot and bent his knees slightly, keeping his sword in middle guard. Predict. Yeah. Predict.
Provided the stranger didn't launch at him again immediately, he continued. "I'm the least of your problems." Well, attacking people in the middle of the day simply because they wanted to find out what the heck was going on was certainly a problem. "Interest doesn't matter, sometimes. It's just not how things are."

Sir Yanin Glade

There were many almost, but quite not like the anchor. Similar enough for the anchor's image to act as amplifier ... to almost, but not quite register as the same thing binding to anchor had attuned one to. What was permeated, could be sensed, and those feelings did not belong. So withdrawal into the anchor and the stable upper earth it was; the anchor was familiar, and the upper earth did not feel or shift quite as violently.

Not much. The first things he had learned were not much, and so he was told to come back once there has been a little more time for research. He did get a new nickname for his new friend, though. "Void beast" was perhaps more apt than "demon".
Meanwhile, he should probably find his squire and let him know about the change in plans. And have lunch. Evidently, the boy had lingered by the gates for a while, and then headed towards the city center, accompanying one of the refugees. He had managed to locate the man, and from him gotten the general direction the squire had headed. Before he moved on, he had handed the man the package he had been carrying under his arm. The man had stared at the package, dumbfounded, and then shuffled in to awkwardly untangle it with a single hand.
Sir Yanin himself continued down the designated path, heavy hiking boots hitting the cobbles, mail west upon his gambeson and his signature sword on his side. Today, he was not concealing his person, so he went without his cloak.

The Prophecy

You're an evil person, Legion. (Never mind that I just might have brought it up myself first. Might.)

EDIT@Rhae: How long is the quarterstaff Morgan uses exactly? Also posted; let me know if I'm otably off with something.

The Prophecy

Think it would work best to me, too. All Dom (and I imagine Iridiel) is doing before setting off is running about and picking up things, after all, and that's not anything that needs too much describing, or its own post. Just would need to decide how we're fitting five people on three animals capable of carrying people - Itanale (Aemoten's horse), Immanuel's donkey and the paladin's big white one (unless we're being suboptimal and just have some humanoids walk ... in which case we'd need to decide which ones).
Gates should work ... if for no other reasons, then because of what sorts of people they'd be passing upon closing in. (There is more or less no one left to recognize there, and thus little to talk, unless they feel like asking whether a large stalking best came through with two people half a day ago, so might as well just stay with Angora's family at this point.)
A couple of additional reminders: Claw will say goodbye before city gates. Iridiel also has a wolf with her.

Will certainly try to type up something for Jordan today; I fell asleep yesterday. Long day.

May make myself go through the Aemoten-timeskip, too.

The Prophecy

Don't worry, Rhae - post length should be relative to what's going on foremost. You'll probably naturally end up a lot when you time-skip over a lot of activities or a character has a time to think and muse, but actual dialogue/combat would obviously leave less opportunity to cover a lot of thought or action (unless we want some unfortunate time-shearing to occur). Of course, the exceptions to this rule are giving background information and describing scenery ... which can be useful to do in some detail just to ensure that everyone imagines the same scene (tree? what tree? oh, we're in a forest, not on a town square? whoops).

Just to note, Jordan isn't quite as hopeless as he seems to think he is - he is at the very least better than the average town guard, courtesy of Sir Janin Glade (and over a year). He is a bit worse than Aemoten (when healthy) is, though, and obviously with not nearly enough practical experience.
Aemoten, while more experienced, has always been slightly worse than Jaelnec in at least the terms of speed and strength, in my mind (so if they were to fight, and Jaelnec didn't make any moves that registered as actual mistakes in my mind, Jaelnec would have probably won).
Domhnall is very quick and agile, but pretty much all his combat experience is from hunting, so might be better off staying back and crossbow-bolting things. Even a fairly inexperienced person with a spear can be rather annoying, though, so at least he has that going for him when it comes to polearm fights. With sword he's quite useless, and I doubt he'd get close enough with a knife to anyone with reach advantage once they have spotted him. He can be sneaky and/or set traps, though.
Etakar is, due to what he is, an absolute physical powerhouse, and has a fair amount of potential to master at least earth elemental magic. (Ironically, unless we count Aemoten's divine bargains, Etakar is my most magically talented narrative character - so leaving out various mentioned characters - to date to be included in this RP. Well, I suppose you could count Nkaa Raakan as "narrative charater", though that one is technically a NPC and, well, an actual god to boot, with everything that comes with the status.)
Sir Yanin Glade is by far my strongest humanoid physical fighter in the RP (even prior to the, uh, "demon problem", which comes with its own set of useful-once-mastered ... which is, in by far most aspects, "not yet", meaning the only pro and con at present is the passive effect provided by presence alone), and the most skilled one. Sir Yanin is also notably less reckless in combat than Aemoten, for the matter...

The Prophecy

Jordan Forthey

The stranger made a slight annoyed sound, then leaped from his position not unlike some wild animal, a cat or some such. It was at least three meters, was it not? The guy was not large, but he wasn't that much slighter than Jordan himself, either. It should have been rather impactful landing, no? He had been right. This was by no means some regular vagrant. The stranger was, at minimum, very well-trained. And more likely to be a combatant than some errant circus performer. Very likely to be somehow magically enhanced. Small feats like these looked easy. Jordan knew full well they weren't.
"Then no, Forthey, errand boy of 'The Viper,' I do not know anything on the supposed happenings of Zerul, whateverintheplanesthatis."
Did the stranger take him for a fool? He knew he was lying, even when he did not know what he was lying about. Another part of Jordan quickly noted: right time, right place, wrong name. The stranger had been waiting for someone, had he not? More than likely, someone whose face he had not seen, but whose name - or whose master's name - he knew... The stranger had been willing to talk until he said a name he was not expecting, had he not? Damn it!
The year and a half he had spent as a guard - this guy was obviously up to something shady! - and his earlier thirst of adventure ... and his his own personal curiosity stated he should intervene. His self-preservation instincts disagreed. Both from natural intuition and what training Sir Yanin had managed to get through to him, he knew this man was extremely dangerous, involved in something shady, and no doubt more skilled than him, as well as rather annoyed by someone unanticipated bothering him. But, he had some kind of duty as a squire, even if he wasn't currently on duty as a guard, right?
Some part of him was also annoyed in turn. Errand boy? No, not at all ... that was something he had decided to do on his own accord. Apprentices could do more than just fulfill whatever tasks their masters desired of them. Especially when said masters had wandered off to do something they appeared unwilling to reveal, too.
For a couple of moments he stood still, watching the stranger rush past him and head towards some more secluded street. No ... if he was to talk to the stranger, then a less public place would hardly do.
"Hey!" he started after the stranger, who immediately whirled around and grabbed hold of the fabric covering his chest.
"I don't know anything, boy!" Cold, annoyed voice was gone. Now the guy sounded like an animal.
Jordan's heart was suddenly beating too hard and fast again, his breath was momentarily caught in his throat, and this time, his hand actually did close around the grip of his sword ... though the dagger would probably have been more useful in an encounter this close. Dumb mistake.
Luckily, the stranger let go almost as quickly as he had grabbed hold of him, and seemed more intent on rushing off than continuing to confront him. "Hack! I-I know nothing, as I said..." Perhaps somewhat unluckily, Jordan was also riled up enough to argue, rather than let go of the matter and shamefully drag himself before his master and admit that he had found something suspicious he could not figure out on his own. Could still go either way ... could end with a rather irritated Viper of Glades, or one who was actually impressed. Granted, he was as of yet unsure whether Sir Yanin even did "impressed". More disconcertingly, it was also possible he had followed him, and was already making judgments...
"I know you're lying," he stated at the stranger's back. "And I know you're meeting up with someone today, and that he was not supposed to be me. I don't know whether you'd prefer to speak to my master rather than I, but we might be able to help you, and you us."
What was he getting himself into?

The Prophecy

Ah, must have somehow read the years as months... Curious, though; I'd imagine cities would be much more dangerous. Very many nosy guards and people who might be capable of sensing him, always someone within shouting distance, people having friends nearby and noticing missing people ... whereas in some very secluded places, one could be dead for weeks or months without anyone realizing. Or feasibly get lost in a forest and be eaten by a bear.

And indeed. The Viper? Not likely to have heard of 'im. Sir Yanin Glade? Probable.

The Prophecy

"The Viper" on its own is not known at all - "The Viper of Glades" is basically just what his eldest brother jokingly nicknamed him a few times, and Jordan dropped the "of Glades" part. If there are any kind of vipers or adders native to Rodoria, there should probably be at least two dozen Vipers running around to boot...
His actual name (Sir Yanin Glade) is moderately known, especially in Etlon, where his family resides, to some extent in Seclyr, where he served for about year and a half, and to a smaller extent in Zerul City (the last in part courtesy of Lady Alaisi). Primarily known for combat prowess, secondarily just for being a Glade. The more specific speculations are endemic to people who actually know the particular members of the family, and have perhaps met him.
(There is at least one more thing Morgan would be immediately notice about him owing to him having been made a sniffer, but I'd probably PM it when Yanin actually shows up.)

Hmm... Morgan was a blacksmith apprentice from eleven to turning eighteen, when he was made sniffer, then he was a sniffer for ... months, a year? before being turned into vampire, and now he's thirty, so might have spent a bit over a decade as a vampire. How far has he traveled as a vampire? ((Trying to figure out what the actual timeframes are for Morgan.))

The Prophecy

@Rhae/Merc: Hmm, I reckon it doesn't make too much difference how long the two interact before Ixion shows up (and whether Ixion shows up before or after "the Viper" does) - as long as Merc lets Rhae/I know when he actually starts writing a post (it has happened a few times people attempt to post at the same time - it can end up being a bit awkward)?

EDIT: Eh... I feel my last post was not much in terms of interaction, but then again, Morgan did ask a rather simple question, and Jordan answered ... can't really assume how Morgan would react, there.

The Prophecy

Jordan Forthey

The stranger stilled for a moment at his words - what was it, surprise, confusion, could the mysterious figure really know something of note? -, then stood fully, leaning on a manner of staff for support.
Alright, what can he tell from the stranger's weapon? It was a polearm of sorts, and a fairly heavy one. Studded, so quite obviously intended as a weapon, but not bladed. So, in combat the stranger would have reach advantage, and blocking of any kind would be very ill advised - it'd be a good way to break a wrist or something of the sorts. All in all, a staff like that would be a bit less difficult to counter than a spear, but not ideal when all you had was a sword...
Furthermore, the stranger might also have magic - for instance, Art of the Warden. If that's what was in that one's disposal, it'd make a fight a lot more difficult. The figure did not have the Fokon wardens' outfit, though ... just some robes that reminded Jordan of those of a monk. Well, and then there was the staff. Very monkly choice. The stranger being a conventional mage felt a bit unlikely - they did usually not look like they were prepared to engage in physical combat, unless they were runesword-wielders, and there was no hiding such a cumbersome lump of metal. Smaller trinkets, though? Feasible.
- The young squire was not really preparing to fight; he was simply practicing. Putting his teachings to use to analyze a real person, for once. Perhaps somewhat counter-intuitively, doing so also calmed him - by giving him something specific to focus on rather than leaving his mind to run rampant and get worked up further. Indeed, the effect was twofold: ensuring that he was focused rather than nervous, and giving him some idea what he had gotten into.
Jordan knew his master also did something much like that ... just, in Sir Yanin's case, it was done in half a blink of an eye, and instinctively, not consciously. And Sir Yanin definitely did not need any calming; from what he understood, his master did not really think of anything else while he was in combat. Perhaps it was some kind of trancelike state for him, void of random, mundane distractions.
"Who --hack!-- wants to know?" Male voice. Still somewhat groggy - so he had, indeed, been sleeping in such a peculiar spot.
So ... that was not a denial (though, too abrupt denial usually meant people had something they wanted to stay hidden, too). Neither did the stranger demand to know what did he expect him to know ... meaning there was probably a very specific thing the stranger expected him to want to know. Interesting. Probably even more dangerous now that he had gotten confirmation that there was something potentially shady going on with the guy, but interesting, nevertheless.
Questions beckoned answers, though ... this one, he would simply answer honestly, without any hesitation.
"This is Forthey, apprentice of the Viper."
Not only had he gotten his master involved - it would certainly add authority to his otherwise not too impressive person -, but for some reason he had opted to invoke him by the nickname he had heard Sir Jeran (himself the Falcon) use for his younger brother. On a snap decision, it had seemed appropriate; shady names for shady dealings, correct? What he said was completely true - he was (Jordan) Forthey, and Sir Janin was the Viper of the Glades ... but it would be much harder to track them back to their origins this way. The Viper both was his master, and wasn't, too.
Depending on how much trouble he managed to get himself into, he might yet need Sir Yanin's help in getting out ... by blade or by influence he could do it, Jordan was quite certain (as long as he managed to hold on his own until then). What his master would do with him afterwards was a different matter.
Jordan had no idea, and it concerned him slightly. So, he hoped it would not get too messy.

The Prophecy

Oh, Tinysoft...