X
Xindaris
Guest
Original poster
Taverns.
Why is it always taverns?
Ninety nine out of one hundred odd jobs that involve massive danger and lots of money. It's always gotta start in one a those f***'n taverns.
Morirune Meriweather Marlowe was not looking at a tavern. Not physically. But even after three days' boring, tedious travel, following a map in spite of being no sort of cartographer, acting as a de facto leader for the little group by simple merit of being early, he still could not get the stench of alcohol and smoke out of his nose. Like many werewolves, he was cursed with a keen sense of smell, and he had never really adapted to it. Of course, since quitting his job as a master statistician due to the unique hazards his condition posed him and taking on the work of an itinerant warrior with a broadsword strapped to his back, he had had nothing but terrible smells to look forward to, day after day.
All that could change now. It was one of those jobs that results from a bizarre will, produced from the equally bizarre mind of an eccentric elderly dragon. Of his hoard, he promised a ton of treasure to each person who would go to a particular castle and stay in it for a full week. Said castle, which once belonged to the king of Josperakkio, was said to be cursed in the most horribly vague of ways, but the dragon was absolutely certain that its every curse would dissipate if even one person could survive and persevere in it for the full extent of one hundred and sixty-eight hours. And those were the conditions he presented in his will, witnessed by six djinni and run through the most excellent supercomputer he could find to ensure its condition lacked any loopholes or grammar errors (there were still five or six after all of that, but nothing important).
It was posted as a bill all around the tri-city area: "Stay in a castle for a week and be paid a ton of dragon's treasure for it", and all the other important details after that. Nowhere on the bill did it mention the place was supposedly cursed or haunted. It really didn't have to be specified. Even half-brained malfunctioning cyborgs could tell that this task involved far more danger than the bill implied. And yet in spite of the obvious trap in the offer, Mori and a number of others who fancied themselves brave, and perhaps were unwittingly a touch stupid, showed up to claim it. The dragon's great grand-nephew, a mostly-elf who of course retained a great bit of his uncle's scaly features, explained the situation, making certain everyone knew that each person's share would be equal regardless of how many stayed the whole week, and therefore they were better off cooperating and not trying to kill or scare one another off like mystery novel characters. Then he gave a few of them who seemed relatively intelligent or trustworthy a map, Mori included, to the castle. It was a three-day journey from where they began, and a tedious, uneventful journey at that; there was plenty of time for everyone to introduce themselves to everyone else, and that was just what they did.
Mori was a Blue Moon Werewolf, the very rare kind that changes not under a full moon, but only upon observing (and mentally acknowledging) an event that occurs sufficiently infrequently to say that it might happen "once in a blue moon". Obviously, once he developed this condition he could no longer work as a statistician, since knowledge of how frequently certain events occurred would allow him to observe far more such events, which would severely aggravate his condition. He had to seek his fortune by another route, and like many who were either without a college education or unable to use it for employment, he went into the itinerant quester racket. It quickly became clear that his unusual strength gave him an advantage with swinging large swords, so that is the niche he entered.
While he was considered the leader and stayed in front throughout the trip, it was fortunate Mori was not the only one with a map. If he had been the only one with a map, it probably would have taken them far more than three days to reach their destination, if indeed they had ever found it at all. Suffice to say, Mori was not terrific at navigation or cartography. In any case, here they were now.
It stood, imposing, a grand building of dark stones that nonetheless shone brilliantly in the afternoon sunlight. It rose up on a hill opposite the one they were climbing now, and once he was fairly certain everyone had had a few seconds to look at it, Morirune stopped with his head looking up, put his hands in his jeans pockets, and said, "Welp, looks like we're finally about there." Then he resumed walking, at a slightly faster pace than before, intent on getting everyone in before sunset. After all, sunset one week is not too far from sunset the next week, and it would make a fine marker of time to prove how long they had stayed in the castle. So of course it did not take them long to reach the imposing doors of the castle.
Morirune had received one thing, as the leader, that nobody else had, and now he produced it from a sack he carried around his waist because carrying a sheathed broadsword across one's back does not leave room for a backpack of any sort. It was a key, an unusually large and simplistic stereotypical key, that fit the lock to those huge doors. He put the key in and turned it, his sensitive ears picking up the turning of the tumblers in the lock, and then pushed the door open a little too hard; it hit the wall with a crack that echoed across the vast empty chambers of the castle's antechamber. There were plenty of windows, so there was plenty of light to see the place in: very traditional, very low-tech, a wide, tall hall with the ancient, torn-up banners of Josperakkio (whose royal crest involved a clock and a donkey, if you must know) hanging across its sides. There was a throne of corroded silver with a torn-up red pillow on the seat, and beyond that a semicircular room with two exits on the left and right ends, an exit straight forward, and an exit exactly between each otherwise adjacent pair of the aforementioned exits: five in total.
It was still a little before sunset. Good. Morirune strode into the castle, the others behind him.
((
4 Things You Should Know Before Joining This RP:
1. This takes place in a Kitchen Sink Universe, which means pretty much anything goes. I strongly encourage you to come up with unusual ideas, or bizarre, unique spins on traditional sorts of sci-fi or fantasy character types.
2. There is a threshold of power to this RP: Simply put, a character who can guarantee (s)he will easily squash 10 average humans in a fight has no reason to be so interested in money. So everyone on this team has weaknesses and flaws, and most importantly, can be killed. (It should go without saying that there will probably be fights with NPCs and might be fights with other player characters along the way)
3. Everyone in the party has properly met all the others, but your fellow RPers have not! Hence, try to introduce your character and describe them with as many helpful details (from a narration standpoint) as you can in your first post.
4. This RP will involve an incomprehensible mess of time paradoxes if I have anything to say about it. It may never get fully sorted out. Just roll with the punches and have fun!
))
Why is it always taverns?
Ninety nine out of one hundred odd jobs that involve massive danger and lots of money. It's always gotta start in one a those f***'n taverns.
Morirune Meriweather Marlowe was not looking at a tavern. Not physically. But even after three days' boring, tedious travel, following a map in spite of being no sort of cartographer, acting as a de facto leader for the little group by simple merit of being early, he still could not get the stench of alcohol and smoke out of his nose. Like many werewolves, he was cursed with a keen sense of smell, and he had never really adapted to it. Of course, since quitting his job as a master statistician due to the unique hazards his condition posed him and taking on the work of an itinerant warrior with a broadsword strapped to his back, he had had nothing but terrible smells to look forward to, day after day.
All that could change now. It was one of those jobs that results from a bizarre will, produced from the equally bizarre mind of an eccentric elderly dragon. Of his hoard, he promised a ton of treasure to each person who would go to a particular castle and stay in it for a full week. Said castle, which once belonged to the king of Josperakkio, was said to be cursed in the most horribly vague of ways, but the dragon was absolutely certain that its every curse would dissipate if even one person could survive and persevere in it for the full extent of one hundred and sixty-eight hours. And those were the conditions he presented in his will, witnessed by six djinni and run through the most excellent supercomputer he could find to ensure its condition lacked any loopholes or grammar errors (there were still five or six after all of that, but nothing important).
It was posted as a bill all around the tri-city area: "Stay in a castle for a week and be paid a ton of dragon's treasure for it", and all the other important details after that. Nowhere on the bill did it mention the place was supposedly cursed or haunted. It really didn't have to be specified. Even half-brained malfunctioning cyborgs could tell that this task involved far more danger than the bill implied. And yet in spite of the obvious trap in the offer, Mori and a number of others who fancied themselves brave, and perhaps were unwittingly a touch stupid, showed up to claim it. The dragon's great grand-nephew, a mostly-elf who of course retained a great bit of his uncle's scaly features, explained the situation, making certain everyone knew that each person's share would be equal regardless of how many stayed the whole week, and therefore they were better off cooperating and not trying to kill or scare one another off like mystery novel characters. Then he gave a few of them who seemed relatively intelligent or trustworthy a map, Mori included, to the castle. It was a three-day journey from where they began, and a tedious, uneventful journey at that; there was plenty of time for everyone to introduce themselves to everyone else, and that was just what they did.
Mori was a Blue Moon Werewolf, the very rare kind that changes not under a full moon, but only upon observing (and mentally acknowledging) an event that occurs sufficiently infrequently to say that it might happen "once in a blue moon". Obviously, once he developed this condition he could no longer work as a statistician, since knowledge of how frequently certain events occurred would allow him to observe far more such events, which would severely aggravate his condition. He had to seek his fortune by another route, and like many who were either without a college education or unable to use it for employment, he went into the itinerant quester racket. It quickly became clear that his unusual strength gave him an advantage with swinging large swords, so that is the niche he entered.
While he was considered the leader and stayed in front throughout the trip, it was fortunate Mori was not the only one with a map. If he had been the only one with a map, it probably would have taken them far more than three days to reach their destination, if indeed they had ever found it at all. Suffice to say, Mori was not terrific at navigation or cartography. In any case, here they were now.
It stood, imposing, a grand building of dark stones that nonetheless shone brilliantly in the afternoon sunlight. It rose up on a hill opposite the one they were climbing now, and once he was fairly certain everyone had had a few seconds to look at it, Morirune stopped with his head looking up, put his hands in his jeans pockets, and said, "Welp, looks like we're finally about there." Then he resumed walking, at a slightly faster pace than before, intent on getting everyone in before sunset. After all, sunset one week is not too far from sunset the next week, and it would make a fine marker of time to prove how long they had stayed in the castle. So of course it did not take them long to reach the imposing doors of the castle.
Morirune had received one thing, as the leader, that nobody else had, and now he produced it from a sack he carried around his waist because carrying a sheathed broadsword across one's back does not leave room for a backpack of any sort. It was a key, an unusually large and simplistic stereotypical key, that fit the lock to those huge doors. He put the key in and turned it, his sensitive ears picking up the turning of the tumblers in the lock, and then pushed the door open a little too hard; it hit the wall with a crack that echoed across the vast empty chambers of the castle's antechamber. There were plenty of windows, so there was plenty of light to see the place in: very traditional, very low-tech, a wide, tall hall with the ancient, torn-up banners of Josperakkio (whose royal crest involved a clock and a donkey, if you must know) hanging across its sides. There was a throne of corroded silver with a torn-up red pillow on the seat, and beyond that a semicircular room with two exits on the left and right ends, an exit straight forward, and an exit exactly between each otherwise adjacent pair of the aforementioned exits: five in total.
It was still a little before sunset. Good. Morirune strode into the castle, the others behind him.
((
4 Things You Should Know Before Joining This RP:
1. This takes place in a Kitchen Sink Universe, which means pretty much anything goes. I strongly encourage you to come up with unusual ideas, or bizarre, unique spins on traditional sorts of sci-fi or fantasy character types.
2. There is a threshold of power to this RP: Simply put, a character who can guarantee (s)he will easily squash 10 average humans in a fight has no reason to be so interested in money. So everyone on this team has weaknesses and flaws, and most importantly, can be killed. (It should go without saying that there will probably be fights with NPCs and might be fights with other player characters along the way)
3. Everyone in the party has properly met all the others, but your fellow RPers have not! Hence, try to introduce your character and describe them with as many helpful details (from a narration standpoint) as you can in your first post.
4. This RP will involve an incomprehensible mess of time paradoxes if I have anything to say about it. It may never get fully sorted out. Just roll with the punches and have fun!
))