SillyGoy

What Lies Below

Haha, he probably will by mistake.

What Lies Below

Adding to Ernst’s relative lack of motivation was his growing sense of being out of place. A dwarf, noble girl, and shady-looking character with red irises and clad in reaching garments were fine enough for him, but the addition of a woman with skin as dark as midnight and hair like the chilly snowflakes at the onset of winter -- and who also lacked an arm, mind you -- as well as yet another woman, but one who bore her midriff in a display of a great lack of shame, made him think that, perhaps, he was biting out more than he could chew.

For these strange characters seemed to be warriors elite, as he deduced simply from their looks. Veteran mercenaries who sure as hell didn’t care if they showed their navel in public, whereas he was but a mere woodsman in an armsman's clothing. The difference in equipment was also stark: sure, he may have had bodkin arrows and an arming sword, but a pair of decorated hilts betrayed master-crafted blades on Ehluria, and it was impossible not to notice the winking of reflected light off the small bits of exposed steel from Katelia’s person: an arsenal of daggers. The noble-looking girl, Osla, also sported plate-and-mail, and she either stole it or bought it at no small price.

Fugitive Powers

Interested as well!

What Lies Below

If there's one thing I like about fantasy RP's and settings in general like this one, it's the amazing freedom of creativity they allow. Needless to say that I am excited for the posts to follow.

What Lies Below

c3p-0h said Kat ignored the boy who had spoken – he looked like one of the beggars she had passed on her way in – and glanced around at the other patrons.

Ooh, dismissing Ernst as a mere beggar is something I didn't expect, but it is not at all unwelcome. That simple act also gave me quite a sharp glimpse into her personality.

What Lies Below

It was with a frown and a brow furrowed with exasperation that Ernst nibbled on the only food he had left: dried river fish. Now, he wasn’t a picky fellow when it came to cuisine, being a peasant and all, but what in the hell possessed that fisherman to put so much salt in it? He found himself reaching for his waterskin often as he sat miserably against the wall of an abandoned house in the night and ate his meager dinner, watching with some contempt a group of youthful adventurers discussing their next travels in undoubtedly newly-forged plate armor. Nobles’ children, no doubt. Enduring much hardship and taking part in the Exodus of the Impoverished has given Ernst a small hatred for the people who lorded over his class. They had it so awfully easy.

But, like he said to himself before, Gods and Kings do what they will, and people like him do as they must. There’s nothing he can change about that.

He had spent most of the day sleeping after checking out the message board in the morning. In the nearby forest, of course, to avoid looters stealing whatever meager value there was left on his person. His skill as a woodsman allowed him to sleep on a thick tree branch without falling, and he woke up only at night, at which point he went back to Toruka to gawk at anything interesting until it was time to meet with his potential employer and/or captain.

But even as an experienced woodsman, sleeping on a tree branch of all places was understandably uncomfortable for Ernst. Gladly would he take the soft cushioning of a warm inn’s bed over hard, cold and scaly bark, but he did not have the money for that: but a lone silver coin lay sewn in the underside of his gambeson, and he was very reluctant to spend it.

Just as he tossed aside the bony remains of his most unwelcoming meal, the distant bells of the local church tolled nine times. He looked in the direction of the sound, and, after a scratch of the head and a weary sigh, his unmotivated muscles managed to win the uphill struggle to get him to stand. He then made his way to the Black Water Tavern: a comely little establishment that offered much comfort for adventurers like him -- if they had the coin, of course.

The glowing hearthfires of the inside contrasted with the cold of the outside night, and he welcomed this new heat as it caressed his face and hands: the only skin left exposed by his bulky, reaching outfit. Meekly closing the door behind him, he approached the only seeming patrons, namely, a dwarf, a sword sister -- wearing plate and mail! She must be a noble's daughter -- and a boy who seemed to like his clothes sporting overreaching, all-encompassing fabric.

“Strange to see such a place having so few patrons,” he said in his approach, by way of greeting. “At this time of night, I expected to see a whole bunch of lads having a good time. But here we are, just being solemn, eh?”

War of the Gods

While this RP is mighty interesting, I haven't the required knowledge on ancient mythology to take part in it. Rather, I would read and enjoy your posts instead.

What Lies Below

Character is ready to go, boss. Meet the Serious Appleman.

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Name: Ernst Eppelmann
Age: 22
Race: Human
Gender: Male
Height: 6’0”
Weight: 84kg

Appearance:



Disheveled, unkempt and dirtied with a perpetual look of seeming detachment in his eyes, Ernst is a testament to the growing poverty of the Arcazia Empire and of its harsh feudal society in general: only a few articles on his person are truly his own, for the helm, sword, rusted mail and padded cloth that bulkily weigh down on him have been looted from the unfortunate dead. What remains of the items he has gotten honestly is a simple white shirt and pants, battered leather sandals, and a thick cap to keep the Sun’s gaze tolerable during work in the fields. Fortunately, however, he is blessed with a resilient constitution, as not even failing crop harvests and subsequent starvation has taken away the respectable musculature brought about by day-to-day hard labor.

He is a Northerner for sure: pale complexion, a small mouth, rigid nose, and a relatively flat face are outward expressions of the fact, though the blonde hair and blue eyes so many nobles covet to have their children posses are not displayed, and instead lurk hidden away in his mixed blood. Ernst has short, brown hair trimmed at the sides and back with forward locks hanging over his forehead, and eyes with brown irises. As a member of the lower strata, he indeed has weathered rough skin and hardened callouses on his hands and feet.

Personality:

“Johann’s been stabbing Adam with his ‘sword’ and he ain’t dead yet! Hahahaha!”

Ernst is down to earth and not prone to flights of fancy, though he does believe in spirits and magic. Being a peasant, he is almost without class, and his jokes and style of banter would prove offensive to those not of the lower strata, for often do they include some vulgarity or another. Frugal and mindful of the use of even the most simple of tools, he tries to keep everything as long-lasting as he can, from the plow he left in his village, to his sword and bow; he takes pains to ensure their longevity.

Raised in a tight-knit community, Ernst does his best to be trustworthy and is rather trusting in turn. His heart calls out for him to do good deeds, but the callousness demanded by life makes him ignore the homeless mother and child starving at the side of the road. But if he had the capacity to do so without endangering his position too much financially or otherwise, he would try to help.

He is courageous to a point, though he will run and encourage others to do so if the battle is being decisively lost.

Fears:
-Death
-Starvation
-Further misfortune

Likes:
-Surviving
-Work
-Money

History of Ernst Eppelmann, son of two Farmers:

The death of his mother due to complications regarding his delivery was but one of the many omens for the life of hardship that was to befall Ernst’s poor soul. He was born as the last child in a litter of four, amongst two sisters and a brother, in a remote, newly-founded village at the northern fringes of the Empire, called Rhoen. Sweet mercy demanded that he be given a good childhood and medieval society did what it could: he attended the small local church with his playmates and friends regularly in the morning for whatever education in basic maths, literature and theology the priest there could offer, and hard, thankless labor followed after noon. He tended to the soil as the father of his father’s father did, alongside his siblings and neighbors. The Eppelmann family had always been that of farmers.

And skilled were they in the art of herbalism and agriculture. Yet they and their fellow villagers were only human, and thus could not stop the wrath of nature when it came in summers that were too hot, springs that were too cold, autumns that were too wet, and winters whose bitterness was nigh-unbearable. But nature showed her gentler side in that Rhoen’s area was blessed with large amounts of game in its myriad forests of pine and whispering spirits. Ernst and his family put to good use the training given to them by army soldiers when the Imperial Diet passed legislation requiring that all able men aged sixteen to forty practice with the longbow to ready themselves for war and conscription, by hunting elk and boar alike to supplement the crop harvest.

So life was harsh, but endurable. And to Ernst and his fellow villagers who knew nothing else but that life, they could do naught but endure.

But as the years went by and Ernst entered the magic of late adolescence and falling in-love until hail distracted him from that, the times grew worse, as for years the crop successively failed. What wine they could make from the shrunken fruits of the harvests was sour and harsh to the tongue, and not even the local priest, Ernst's former teacher by this time and who performed frequent and thorough exorcisms all over the fields to ward away evil spirits and demons that could have been haunting their crop, could help.

The Rhoeners tried to repair their home and fields, but were met only by failure as crops actually began to die after being planted. Not even the radical crop rotation method they had adopted only out of desperation from some clearly mad scholar bore any good results; it may have, in fact, exacerbated the problem! To offset the failure of the farmlands, they took to the forests and their unlimited number of animals to hunt, and for a time, the villagers feasted on meat. Then it seemed that, because of their greed, the forest was depriving them of game. And thus they came to know starvation.

But Northerners are a stubborn people who would do anything to preserve their homeland. This virtue became a curse as the Rhoeners tried in vain to reverse it all, while their lives were snuffed out one by one by the summers, springs, autumns and winters that each had their particular brand of extremes. Only a dozen and a half or so families remained when the first few finally began to emigrate.

And apparently, it was like this in great swathes of the Empire. The Rhoeners were but part of an exodus of people looking to find themselves a living. Southwards was the path to greener pastures yet these pastures seemed to be actively running away from Ernst as every village he and his family came upon were experiencing the same crop failures. It was also with dismay that one of them had been affected with plague, which killed his brother and a sister. Father tried to be strong, but he was old now, and succumbed to exhaustion and overexposure. And so, Ernst, along with the beloved younger of his two elder sisters Julia, went south.

But Julia fell into despair and did not have the same patience as her brother. Provisions as they traveled were beginning to run low, and soon, Julia decided to settle as a prostitute in some brothel down the highway. While mildly disgusted by the act, Ernst understood that it was done only out of desperation. He tried to find what work he could nearby her brothel so they could support each other, but these were usually but odd jobs of carrying things and delivering messages. Though he found temporary work as a carpenter for some noble constructing his family’s summer house, he earned little gold, and so, after saying farewell and making a promise to his whoring sister that he would come back, he went further South.

Yet only calamity would befall him, for as he rested in a roadside tavern (paying his stay via unpaid work as he could not afford to spend that much), a group of deserters from the local lord’s army barged into the building with swords drawn and demanded that the keeper and its patrons give them gold. This was yet another great display of the Empire’s growing poverty, for these soldiers’ purses were devoid of naught but the littlest coin, because their lord had no more money to pay their still-mounting mounting arrears and thus they suffered as everyone else.

Those who could, paid. Those who could not, were killed: for power was a strong wine, and the power of the sword in front of so many unarmed and unarmored civilians could skewer one’s morality so. The fearful Ernst was paralyzed as the soldiers covered both the back and front entrances of the tavern, and could only reply with a sorry “Forgive me, sir, but I haven’t any coin,” to the unhelmed bowman with the face crisscrossed with scars and a pointed dagger.

As expected, this dagger was plunged in Ernst’s direction, yet he had the foresight to know this was coming, and so broke the bowman’s jaw with a good fist even as he cocked his hand back. The farmer took the dagger and began to sprint towards the back entrance, enjoying divine intervention when a spearman suddenly tripped and unblocked the doorway in his fall. The other soldiers began to chase him, but the tavern’s patrons and staff started to attack them as they ran. For as these were but conscripted youths, save for the bowman with the dagger who seemed to be their leader, killing them was frightfully easy under the combined power of numerous boots smacking into their faces over and over.

When it was all done, Ernst had the good idea to loot a corpse or two. From this act of disrespecting the dead, he procured a gambeson, a mail shirt, an arming sword (undoubtedly stolen from a knight), new arrows and a simple sallet helm of good make that had only a few noticeable dents: good stuff that would have cost him no small amount of silver. Though three patrons lost their lives, Ernst was rewarded with some coin for making the first move by the tavern keeper. The youth then asked the keeper if she would hire him after this incident, half-jokingly offering to be a bodyguard, in the hopes that he could get some steady money now that he’d made a good impression (or so he thought) but the woman but frowned and said that they were already fully staffed.

Now armed and armored, Ernst continued his journey southward, and found no prosperity for him. No good work came to be, and the enlistment sergeants warned that even if he did join the standing army, there would be delays in his pay -- which, of course, meant that he wasn’t going to be paid at all.

Now, Ernst was never prone to flights of fancy, but desperation could do much to change a man. His many months of staying in inns and taverns has brought to his ear much gossip, ancient treasure so unimaginably great in the bowels of some lost Dwarven city being one of the more interesting ones, along with other rumors of other treasures, both of which he was slowly coming to believe. He also came to know loneliness, for he longed for his far-away sister, the only other living member of the Eppelmann family, and of the older days, when things weren’t as bad.

He also tried to be a hunter in these more southward regions, only that it was apparently illegal to hunt deer, and the forests were already exhausted of their game. Every potential employer but showed him an empty hand faced at him, saying that he should have come earlier. Ernst’s despair deepened, and soon he was no better than a common thief. His pickpocketing skills, however, leave much to be desired as he was caught on his second try after chickening out on the first; so he went south again, this time to evade prosecution, finding himself in the village of Toruka.

If anything, Ernst at this point was incredibly unhappy. Life, already lacking luster for a peasant like him, seemed to have turned black. His movements were sluggish as he went to check the message board, and it was his slipping grip on sanity to consider and accept the proposal of the mystery man.

“Gods and Kings do what they will, and the rest of us do what we must,” he said, reflecting on his life thus far as he steeled himself to accept death in this most desperate adventure. For what could he do but embark upon it, when he was almost out of money and not even the most menial of all work was available?

Inventory:
-Waterskin
-Tinderbox
-Hunting Knife
-One set of clothes: cotton shirt, cotton pants, cotton cap
-Traveling backpack
-Spoon made of goat horn
-Dried river fish

Purse:
-A lonely silver coin

Weapons:
-Arming sword
-Hunting bow and a sizable quiver of bodkin arrows
-Farmer’s sickle

Armor:
-Sallet helm
-A long-sleeved cloth shirt, over which is
-A long-sleeved mail shirt, over which is
-A padded gambeson.
-Cloth trousers covered by the long flaps of the gambeson
-Leather sandals

Fighting Style:

Ernst, if given the choice, would fight at range. He prefers stealth and taking out the enemy from a distance rather than being loud and charging, waving a sword above his head. And he does this very well, being like a hovering ghost even in a lonely forest wherein the crickets refuse to sound and the elk herds graze with great caution, one unfortunate member of which would be suddenly struck by an arrow out of nowhere and felled cleanly. This reflects his skill in the field of hunting and archery. Having managed to loot bodkin arrows, he should have no trouble immobilizing the foe.

In melee, he can give a good account of himself, though one should not expect him to last long, for his only experience is dealing with angry boars, belligerent drunks, and starving bandits. Though by no means a professional, his life of labor makes his attacks quite powerful.

What Lies Below(Fantasy adventure)

Very interested. Count me in!

Character Crossover Crisis City

Understandable. Then I would grab someone else.

EDIT: I cannot seem to think of anyone. Oh well, I'll return when inspiration strikes.