- Posting Speed
- One post per week
- Online Availability
- 5-11 EST weekdays, anytime weekends.
- Writing Levels
- Give-No-Fucks
- Adept
- Advanced
- Douche
- Adaptable
- Preferred Character Gender
- Primarily Prefer Female
- Genres
- Superhero, urban fantasy, space opera, crime thriller, supernatural
Characters - Lore
Faces of papyrus complexion make their procession through windless Inferia, the spiral of the Ringed City, and the murk and mire of the Soup Bowl. Ink-etched, these visages spoke simple-enough words, voiceless; 'Wanted', 'Only Alive', and the promise of a prize that confounds the middling-man's imagination. In only a single dimming-and-rising of the colorless sun, these bounty posters have pervaded the Kingdom's walls and caverns, and its streets, born dutifully by the ironclad hands of the Guard. They are of two faces, elegantly drawn with presumption more scientific than artistic, twin vagaries depicted to the best of some tucked away drawer's ability.
They are recognizable by some. The man is a near ubiquitous fixture of Inferia, the harping one-eyed 'revolutionary', full of grand promises and platitudes; Hirava of Hot Air. The prize attached to his visage is not so high, and the drawing's pouty expression is almost as if resentful of the fact; his capture is secondary, made significant in toto by the other. The other is of a girl. The girl, perhaps, given the bounty.
The iron-clad step of the Guard, permeating through the kingdom, is as the incessant pounding of drums sounding for war. The cacophony of the aspirant masses pollutes the ambience in its own messy discordance, men and women from every walk and race joining the hunt.
The Cheapest Inn in all the Ringed City
There are many reasons, one imagines, to drink. There are, some would say, less so in the way of justifications. Hirava, he of endless (blustering) rhetoric, had made an attempt at formulating his own. He was - is - a revolutionary. Revolutions came in circles. His mind often wandered in circles after a great deal of drinking. Thusly, drinking was both well-reasoned and well-justified, especially when he had enough merit tokens for the establishment in question.
"Circle, circles… what rhymes with circles? Drown my lungs with swill… turn me purple… purples." He titters to himself.
Hirava is drinking, an arm resting against the counter, the other helping in downing the contents of some low-grade swillfish. It is as he has always done, after a round of his rousing 'sermons'. He is, pointedly, ignoring the myriad gazes fixed upon him. Judgmental pricks.
The Barkeep, as quintessentially old as can be, looks on with some blend of sympathy and disgust. There is a price on the man, he knows, yet he is loathe to exchange the drunk's freedom for his own well-being. That, and he's unwilling to risk the hernia that could arise from the attempt. If it were the girl, perhaps. He shakes the unsavory thought from his mind as he stares at his patron, casually gutting another fish for his consumption.
The barkeep realizes: Hirava does not know he is marked, by some unfathomable feat of incredible ignorance.
The Cheapest Inn in all the Ringed City is not also the Largest Inn in all the Ringed City, and so today it is perhaps the most Densely Packed. Men and women, humans, dwarves and elves jostle for position along the walls of the establishment, and it's eight or so tables. They are here to hunt, which means they are not here to drink. This disappoints the barkeep; one is an ogre whose head reaches to the ceiling, and his capacity for drink could line a proprietor's pockets for the whole year.
The counter is vacant, save for Hirava's idiotic posterior. The hunters know that the moment one approaches, chaos ensues. After all, no one worth their salt will split the bounty of some small-fish.
And so only one is leaving with Hirava.
The Elevator - The Soup Bowl
There is a quiet screech as the platform of the Elevator slides along the translucent tower. The base of the Elevator's glassy spire sits in the center of the waters, and it radiates a quaint aura of light from the reflection of the colorless sun. It is but a dot amidst the murky green of the Soup Bowl, a tantalizing hint of what lies above.
The platform descends, and after a short time, a vessel emerges from the spire's base. Hard, black-wood, emblazoned with the red-white heraldry of Inferia; its passengers, the whispers say, are even more hunters and Guardsmen from the tiers above. Along the boardwalks of the Soup Bowl, jeers and howls of disdain and disapproval can be heard, ranging from unintelligible to palpably obscene.
The vessel makes for an impromptu dock - which is to say that it makes for the least eminently distasteful patch of boardwalk. Already, a contingent of denizens await. They are not a welcoming party. If Hirava isn't spewing his shit in the Soup Bowl, then he's up above, in the Ringed City. The vessel, once it dispenses with its current medley, will serve as their ferry.
But for only a few of them.
A man, severe and of the stick-up-bunghole comportment, regards the gathered lot from in front of them, smoothing over his Inferian garment with unusually large hands. His directive was simple; the Ringed City was not to be overly disturbed by hooligans from the Soup Bowl. The reverse was of no particular import.
"We'll take but ten of you unruly curs up above!" he says, loud and bombastic.
Something tense stirs amongst the contingent.