Darkening Skies: An End To History

[Excession]

CHARACTERS: BY INVITATION ONLY - CHARACTER INDEX - Darkening Skies: Characters
OOC: BY INVITATION ONLY - Darkening Skies: An End To History

It is the Year of Dominion 288, and the people of Imeria live in interesting times.

The Ember Rose, airship of recently-promoted Desolator Olimak Lenore, is docked at Puddleglum Spire where progress and tradition are preparing to clash for the throne. Worse, her crew includes an exiled Stormlord noble with some of the deadliest assassins in the known world pursuing them.
Can they turn this crisis into an opportunity?

RULEBOOK

 

[Ragoza]

Weaver

"Please, call me Weaver."
Big smile, it indicates trustworthiness. In humans anyway, those 'monkeys' down south did NOT appreciate that tactic.
"With all due respect, madame, that is simply not thinking big enough.I understand your reluctance, it's definitely a big change, but I think if you just give it a try you'll immediately see the advantages."
Hmm, her facial expression isn't exactly encouraging here. Better sweeten the deal.
"And just for you I'm willing to do a special deal, eight legs for the price of six!"
She'll never resist THOSE savings.

 

[Alexandra]

Puddleglum Spire Mid-market

"....jams, jellies, chutneys, pickles; all guaranteed to last for months at sea or sky."
A young Wildlander woman in a brightly patterned turban talks a mile a minute as she spoons a variety of preserves onto crispbread for sampling by the passing crowd, strings of tiny beads at her wrists and neck jingling.
"Are you familiar with our salted ume, sir?" she brandishes a tray of some kind of wrinkly pickle at Llorn "Whole ume is at its best with a bowl of rice."
Making eye contact with the Chronomancer, something seems to pass between them. "If it is too salty, perhaps sir would prefer the sweet and sour takuan?"

 

[FuzzMonster]

Heresh

*clang*
*tink tink*
*solder*
*crackle*

The workshop down below decks, forward of the cargo hold, has been painstakingly warded and shielded by Heresh, her tools carefully degaussed and tuned. It's not a very big space, and looks like someone arranged the benches and clamps of a machinist's shop around the ritual space of a crazed lightning cultist. On one bulkhead, picked out in copper and cobalt, is an image of a dying dragon, pierced by a lightning bolt and falling through stylised stormclouds.

There is a wiry figure tapping with tiny hammers, scoring with scribers, crackling with irons, and rapping with rivets.

Does Urral choose to be present for the installation of the electricity redirection system into her armour?
@Custodiet Teh

 

[PixelWitch]

Colby - Puddleglum Spire Market

It's the sound that catches him first, his ears pricking at the sound of the jingling and chiming of many beads and jewelry, making him look up from his tea as he sat at the stall, eyes bright with curiosity.
He doesn't interrupt the conversation, which seems to be happening between the Good Doctor and a new and very colourful young lady, but continues to gorge on the bag of strawberries he had been very mildly persuaded into buying by another ratkin stall. He arranges the tiny green stalks around his teacup like a miniature flower arrangement.

 

[Hair]

Nat

PULSE Café

Nat squeezes through the mess of tables in the crowded café, meandering towards the counter. His battered, oil-stained work clothes let him blend in with the other clientele, though his rusty brown fur and sparsely adorned ears place him in the minority.
He catches the barista's eye, indicates his order from just outside hearing range in the busy buzz of the shop. He collects his drink: coffee, black as engine oil, and moves around the walls of the shop, poking at the displays. His eyes rove across the patrons, as his mind brushes their emotions.

He looks especially for confidence, those use to command. His last captain had let him go a few days back, he's searching for a likely employer. A Guild-trained magatech generally doesn't lack for work, though as Nat had only recently left The City-Engine the captains he had talked to thus far had been leery towards taking him on.

 

[Silvertongued]

Olimak Lenore - The Ember Rose

Taking the proffered letter curiously from the runner, Lenore flips it front and back. There didn't seem to be a name or record of origin. It was simply addressed to her.

She scans through the text, taking note of the wording and punctuation. Obviously not a native speaker, but one well informed nonetheless. The Quartermaster was referring to referring to the Silverlight, but the individual beyond that was less certain. Most likely the girl's maddened uncle, but it could easily be that of the unknown number of assailants that followed them.

The information the were offering though, that seemed promising. The fact that it may be a trap was one that passed her mind, albeit briefly. Lenore's confidence in her strength of body and reputation left little room for belief that such an attempt might succeed.

Her eyes flicker up from the paper to the runner.

"I agree to their terms. Let them know that I would see them today," she tells the waiting ratkin, who had been nervously wringing calloused hands. Silver whiskers bob as he nods his head, and he scurries back to relay the message.

Watching the runner depart, the Captain turns her thoughts inwards. The Lezek was working alongside Morrikin to insulate the former's armor, Silverlight was displaying her marked irreverence at the market with the good Doctor and Master Colby, and Macrus, Flameheart, and Loman, had all told her of their intentions to leave. The trio were an unfortunate loss, but Lenore was loathe to hold unwilling crewmembers, even if she was left bereft of first mate, general body, and engineer, respectively.

New members would have to be acquired, and soon.

 

[Excession]

Nat Weaver Colby The Rose

• 
  There's a strong tang of ambition and anger in here, and a rising note of fear.
  No sense of someone hiring here. Coffee is decent, at least, served in a foam cup.
  
  And then the blast rocks the Spire.
  
• 
  "It just seems a bit... excessive," the rep says, carefully, backing away just a little. "A fine deal, mind you, but I'm not sure my employer is in the market for-"
  
  A rat pushes past you, her fur dyed lurid colours and ears jingling with piercings. She's clutching something in her paws.
  
  "How rude!" hisses the rep, as she goes.
  
  You open your mouth to speak, and all sound is annihilated. The air is knocked from your lungs and you find yourself spiralling into the air.
  
• 
  You sense something unusual - an erratic pitter-patter of paws on deck, a boxy device painstakingly cut to fracture along geometric lines. Something unfamiliar, too; related to minerals and yet odd.
  
  One of the rebel rats from PULSE, recognizable by her offbeat look, rushes up to L'amnia with that strange box in her paws.
  
  "May the workers unite!" she yells, pushing a button.
  
  Your ears ring painfully, and your vision is obliterated by a bright light. Your whole body chimes like a bell.
  
  The next thing you know, you're on the ground amid the wreck of the tea stall. You feel cold, yet covered in something warm and thick. Your cracked eyeglasses are smeared with red, occluding your returning vision.
  
• 
  The whole Spire quakes. An alarm howls.
  

 

[PixelWitch]

Colby - Puddleglum Spire Market

Deaf.

Deaf...? No?
Strange distant ringing.
S- S- Shrill. Hurts. Hurts Ears, hurts head.
Hangover...? N. No.
Headache. Hit head. Shove? Kick. Kick? Thrown.
Need to wipe glasses.

Blind. Red? White. Light too light. Dark too dark. No shapes. Need shapes. Doooooooon't opppppeeennnn eyessss. EFFF...everything spinning. NO. No look. Can't. Hurts head. Still blind.
Need to wipe glasses.

Insides. Vibrating. Tuning fork. Hummmmmm. Bones are metal. Hammer and anvil. Hithithithithithithit. Stomach. Lungs. Humming. Can't breathe. Can't breathe. Burns. No air inside.

Gravel. Stabbing back. Legs. That... a nail. Glass. Grinding. Sense metal. Wood. Sharp. Pointy. Prick. Stab. Hurts.
ffffuUUCKINGWipe glasses
Still not working. Still blind. Arms trapped.
Turn Over.
...
TURN OVER.
...
No?
Sit.
Sit Up.
SIT UP.
Woahfuckheadrushdon'tdothat.
Breathe. Breathe. Air goes in. Air goes in should not hurt. Stomach blocking lungs. Don'tthrowupdon'tthrowupdontthrowup.
Drooling. Need handkerchief. Can feel the teeth inside gums. Tongue. None missing. Good? Good. Tastes like metal. Iron.
Tongue is shaking. Body is shaking.
Cold. Cold and Wet.
Can't have drooled that much, and drool isn't ... red.
Red.
It's all red. So much. Red. Where is all this red coming from? It's like it's...
...
Blood. It's blood isn't it. It's MY blood isn't it.

Oh.
Oh No.

 

[FuzzMonster]

Heresh
Ember Rose, forward compartment

Speaking of compartments, the moment the Spire shakes and the alarm howls, Heresh compartmentalises. Ten years of Spire technician training take over.

Ship impact? No, too fast, no secondaries.

Her hands put away tools without even looking.

Storm containment failure? No, I would have felt that.

She moves to check pistol and rifle as she grabs her armour rig.

Boiler burst? Possibility, wounds hideous, steam burns horrific.

Heresh turns to Urral and barks out "Honoured Ascendant, obligation to serve allows not to shirk, attend those-wounded of mechanical disaster. I must go."

Within moments, Heresh is armed and armoured, pistol and rifle, but also toolkit and dandelion cores.

She hits the outer deck running, strapping her helmet in place.

"Desolator! Permission to investigate explosion and offer assistance!"

 

[Ragoza]

Weaver

Explosion. Bomb. Pump adrenaline, need to help survivors.

Weaver's adrenal glands are in overdrive before he even hits the ground. The old training kicks in and he rolls reflexively, filtering his nose and ears to prevent sensory overload.

Fucking Eotre. No internal bleeding, the crack in that thigh bone will knit right up, no burns, manageable bruising. Lucky this time. Better get to work, make sure a few more people have lucky days.

He drags himself up, scanning the room for triage candidates. Better turn the noise filter up again, the screams are profoundly distracting.

 

[Silvertongued]

Olimak Lenore - The Ember Rose

Lenore does not pause the steps of her kata when the rumble courses through the ship, nor does the ringing of the alarm afterwards elicit a response either. Each motion rolls into the next, a burst of movement ending in a solid stance, slowly radiating power before the next explosive gesture.

It's only when the young spireling stands to rapt attention before her that the Captain ceases her movements.

Stray wisps of hair have tugged free of her temple braids, framing her face with dark strands. Her breathing is deep and even, the barest whisper of exertion to it.

"Go. See to your countrymen,"

 

[Custodiet Teh]

Lezek Urral

The shuddering explosion seemed to crawl through the Rose, dampeners taking most of the energy out of the quake. Urral moved to steady Heresh from any aftershock but the Spireling was already moving around the room much like how Colby described his siblings after imbibing sweets. Just seeing the speed in Heresh was actually making Urral feel slow and sluggish in comparison. Urral turned towards the door and Heresh jumped in from under her view.

"Honoured Ascendant, obligation to serve allows not to shirk, attend those-wounded of mechanical disaster. I must go." And with that, Heresh flew from the room with the Urdspeak still hanging in the air. Urral looks back to her armaments locked in place and half dismantled. She lurches back into the room, snatching her halberd and storming up to the deck to survey and make sense of the rolling alarms.

Damage to the tower was evident, scattered through the cityscape were plumes of smoke. Chaos radiated and the small hint of Pride that normally lay over the city was obscured by the scent of confusion and panic. Not very becoming of the populace to act this way under pressure, but what could one expect of rats?

Urral's concern for the city refines into a more honest concern for her crewmates in said city. They may have had harm come to them or worse have had a hand in the exploding. She wouldn't put it past to crew to be involved somehow. A shock of panic hits her at this realization. No wonder Heresh was moving at such speed.

Without waiting for instruction, Urral heads to the tallest point of the ship and leaps, gliding toward the chaos of the city to find and account for what remained of her Family

 

[Hair]

Nat

What Remains of PULSE Café

"Wha-?" Nat's head flicks around, a lifetime of instinct sending his hand to the grip of the sawn-off concealed beneath his overalls. He knows the sound of an improvised explosive intimately. He pushes against the surge of sentients, feeling a mounting panic and dread permeating his being. He wasn't a healer, but maybe he could help keep order.

Wait, why am I moving towards the danger. This is a bad idea. I should run. I'm gonna run.

Nat turns to follow the press of bodies, before realising the problem. White gates of calm smash down over his senses, shutting off the flood of borrowed emotion. His heart is racing, an irritating lubdub filling his ears, drowning the screaming. His muscles are all tense, now he's going to have to stretch this evening, he preallocates half an hour after dinner to this task. Wait, the bomb. There's a stampede brewing here. That would be sub optimal. Nat takes hold of the glistening white sphere of a fortress surrounding his amygdala and pushes, forcing the severance of higher thought and base emotion upon the poor, mewling beings surrounding him.

[I assume a roll will be required here, what app do you want us to use? If this is outside the scope of my mage shit just let me know, I can edit it.]

 

[Excession]

Nat Weaver Colby Heresh & Urral The Rose

• 
  The fear bordered on overwhelming before your defenses came down. Now you're the centre of an expanding island of serenity amid the roiling crowds. Who are, it seems, largely confused by their sudden loss of impetus.
  
  PULSE is largely untouched by the explosion, although scorch marks creep through the door and one of the baristas is swearing at a shard of shrapnel in her leg.
  
  Despite the filters over your mind, you sense a point of intense emotion approaching at speed. The passions of the Infernal Houses burn brighter to your senses than any mortal can.
  
• 
  A dozen severe burns that can't wait but take little enough to get under control. Twice that in sharpnel wounds, but as long as the silly buggers don't pull out the bits of metal you have time for more severe cases.
  
  Like the rat in what were once very nice clothes, bleeding out from his mangled paws.
  
  Something isn't right, though - you can feel your cells shredding, in slow yet inevitable fashion. You've never encountered anything like it, but you can predict the result: about a day feeling perfectly fine before your organs rapidly deliquesce. Assuming you're not the only one affected, anyone it doesn't kill is going to develop cancers.
  
• 
  There is only the ringing in your ears. The pounding of feet on deck. But then you feel it, like a child coming home - Urral and Heresh's armour.
  
• 
  It's chaos at the docking level. Knights of Puddleglum stomp by in heavily ensorcelled suits. Somewhat more modern security personnel follow with nonlethal arms. Gunfire reports from an indeterminate location.
  
  Heresh knows that given the era of Puddleglum's construction, there's a freight elevator shaft right about there which is all but guaranteed to be out of use.
  
• 
  A stranger approaches the gangplank. @Alexandra
  

 

[PixelWitch]

Colby - Ground Zero

Time felt strange. Distended.
Too slow, yet everything was happening at once.
A lot was occurring around him. He could tell in a detached way from the dulled sound of screaming and swearing and the dim sensation of feet thudding on the floor and debris begin shoved around.
There was movement, but it barely registered. Blurred shapes rapidly losing their colour as everything was slowly fading to shades of cold grey.
He looked down.
Best suit was ruined, peppered with shrapnel and spattered with blood. Bad burns on the knees of the trousers too. That was never coming off...
Even his good dress shirt sleeves ended at the elbows. In a ragged red mess.
He blinks dumbly.
Wait, no.
That's... that's not right.
What...
It started slow at first, like a little flutter in the pit of his stomach. Realization. Brain slow to put the pieces together. A wave of cold, needle sharp, raked down his spine, panic clawing into his lungs and making them tight and hot. Heartbeat deafening in his ears and hammering in his neck.
The urge to throw up came on hard again, eyes streaming.

Two little pinpricks, sharp against the blunt cold grey of his vision touch the edges of his hysterical senses. He turns for them, something to focus his rapidly ebbing consciousness on.

 

[Alexandra]

The Ember Rose

A hooded figure stops short of the gangplank, waiting rather than boarding the ship. They turn back to the spire, watching the smoke rise, and swear softly.

 

[FuzzMonster]

Heresh
Deck To Dock To Shaft

Heresh is a vision in bronze and canvas. A blurred vision moving at high speed, calculating her position.

Docks to the lower market level, several layers down. Vertical. Got it.

Heresh slams into the cage of the freight shaft, and unfurls part of her external rig. In particular, she produces the carabiner and climbing winch at her belt, firmly locked into the harness.

Gravity, you and I don't always get along, but today you're my main girl.

This, you see, is how Heresh ends up clipping the 'biner to a stanchion in the wall of the elevator shaft, rigging the winch to unfurl slowly, filling the shaft with a bubble of rising warm air, and letting herself quite literally drop six storeys. She unclips and comes bursting out of the elevator shaft, looking for the damage and the wounded, her whisker fine senses of air extended around her for a hundred yards in all directions.

For the record, if Urral is not approaching via some other direction, that air current Heresh created in the shaft would almost perfectly serve to allow Urral to do the same drop, but with wings instead of a rope and clip arrangement.

 

[Silvertongued]

Olimak Lenore - The Ember Rose

Spying the new figure at the base of the gangplank, Lenore allows her kata to slow, relaxing her muscles as she ends the dance. With a long, deep, exhale, she stands, stepping over to the edge of the ship.

"Greetings unknown-one," she announces in crisp, clear Urd.

 

[Ragoza]

Weaver

Oh for FUCK's sake. Right, fixing that's going on the to-do list, followed by finding out who the hells set this bomb, followed by finding out what EXCUSE for a Communer made this pathogen for them, followed by tearing said Communer LIMB FROM FUCKING LIMB. Ok, dial back the adrenaline, lives to save.

Tiny flowers bloom in Weaver's beard as he crouches by the rat, laying a hand on his chest and sending a gently pulse through him, searching for internal injury.
[Rolling Applied Magical Theory - 1 success]
The external injury is pretty obvious, that arm has been almost completely obliterated. Around this point Weaver remembers that the poor rat is conscious and would probably appreciate a little assurance.
"Just relax for me sir, my name is Weaver, I'm a doctor."

 

[Alexandra]

The Ember Rose

The figure turns, lowering their hood; it's a young woman. Ordinary looking enough, sensibly dressed, with long brown hair pulled back in a braid.
"Honoured Ascendant Captain," she responds in Urd, "I sent a letter ahead, but I must apologise. It seems I am too late."