(Adventure) Rivenblight's Castaway [Creamsteak judging]

[doghead]

Jaan's sleep however, gradually becomes less quiet as he slips deeper into the cycles.

Wet footprints leave a trail across the bare, slightly dusty floor of the great hall. Jann moves into the room and begins to follow the footprints across it. 10, 9, 8, 7, ... the countdown is slow and precise, matching the passing of the footprints ... 6, 5, 4, 3, ... Jaan looks up and is puzzled to see that there are many more foot prints ahead ... 2, 1. Jaan wakes up. The sun burns down on the dusty plain. The footprints continue on ahead of him. He starts walking again, but faster this time. This time he does the counting ... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4, 7, 4, 9, 3, 456, 34 ,23, 5, 5, 6 ... WHACK! Jaan yelps with pain. The old ranger grins mirthlessly. "You're thinking too much again lad. As soon as you try and think out the fight in advance, your attack becomes pertrified. Now, relax and try again. Don't think, just go with the rhythm of it." Jaan's brow furrows in concentration. Somethings not right. I should be past six by now. Jaan snaps awake. The stars glitter above. He lies motionless for a moment listening to the slight sounds of the forest around them. Someone sniffs somewhere behind him. He rolls over and looks around until he spots the block of darkness that is whoever on guard. Jaan rolls into a sitting position with a grunt suffiently obvious to let whoever know that he was awake. After a quite exchange, he takes over.

Jaan sits there for a while, wrapped up in his cloak, drinking in the sights, sounds and smells of the pale moon lit glade. He has never doubted his calling to the service of the Greenman. But sitting there, he is conscious of a sence of distance from the world that lies around him. He could not track an animal, or recognise a bird from it call. Part of him realises that it is mostly just a response to the frustrations of the day. Mostly.

He is struck by a yearning to get up and just walk into the woods. To wander between the trees. To get lost in among the kingdom he has sworn himself to. To be touched by whatever that is. He remains motionless however, til the urge has faded away into just a faint sence of longing.

Jaan stands and walks to the edge of the glade. Selecting a tree, he settles against it and just tries to let its presence seep into him. At first there is just the indistinguishable sounds of the woods - the rustling of leaves, the occasional creaking of boughs. But gradually a pattern seems to emerge between breezes and noises, distances and directions become clearer, he begins to feel that he can distinguish the sounds of this tree from the others. Jaan sighs softly. He stands and rests his forhead against the tree briefly, breathing in deeply as if to draw in its particular smell, as if to remember it.

He returns to his spot by the others. Rummaging around in his bag, he pulls out his waterskin and drinks deeply. Then he finds his rations and begins to eat.

ooc: Hey Sparky. Xiao was somewhat of a surprise package - very rapidly taking on a life of his own. All I really needed to do was to keep in mind the 'stranger in a strange land' image of him. But I take your rebuttal as a great compliment, coming as it does from one who seems to write a great character so effortlessly.

Decided to do some work on giving Jaan some life as well. Not inspired. Workmanlike perhaps.

 

[GnomeWorks]

Somewhere, the soul of Troi Delmontes wanders, a traveler of time and space... dreaming dark dreams...

He finds himself in a dark alley, dazed and confused. Lightning flashes and rain pours in great sheets around him, and the ground below him is muddy. In a flash of brilliant purple, a dark form rises before him... and all sense of confusion is gone.

Zidaniel Raziel.

With the speed of lightning and a cry of thunder, he draws his whip, and dashes at his hated foe. Zidaniel draws forth his longsword, and easily sidesteps the young man.

Troi angrily turns, and the two face each other, locked in the gaze of the other - each staring into the reflection of himself.

"Let us dance, you and I." Zidaniel says calmly in his lilting voice, the recitation of that ancient ritual sending shivers down Troi's spine.

"Yes, let us dance." Troi replies, shaking his uncertainty away, readying his whip for the battle...

...and as suddenly as he found himself in that same dark alley, he finds himself in another place and time...

He is in a small room. A single large window allows the light of the full moon to shine down through thick, pale white drapes. A woman, as pale as the moon itself and garbed in rich and elaborate garb made of material as dark and mysterious as a starless night, sits on the edge of a bed.

"Your roll..." A voice says somewhere from elsewhere, and a tiny white die rolls across the floor, black pips glistening in the moonlight.

"Four." Troi says quietly as the die rolls to a stop, and he looks to the woman in black, who only returns to him a vacant expression with eyes of ice and steel...

...and the face of the woman in black turns to the eye of a great storm, whirling with boundless force around him, yet does not envelop him. Troi shields his eyes from the wind, though he knows deep within that he cannot fight this gale, that it will blow him away and dash his hopes and dreams to pieces like so much glass from a mirror...

...and somewhere, a voice speaks: "Carry on our wayward son... there'll be peace when you are done..."

...and the voice solidifies before him, taking on the form of the woman in black - but her face is not the face of the woman in black, it is the face of Shiva, and Troi recoils in mental anguish as the memories of that fateful night come pounding full force into his mind, the pain as palpable as that caused by the blade of Zidaniel...

...and suddenly, the blade of Zidaniel is there once more, slicing through his shoulder, warm blood spurting from the wound and spraying them both, just as his whip's razor-thin edge slices against Zidaniel's face. He falls back into the wall he knows must be there, as it had been that night...

...but there is no wall, and he continues falling, falling through the skies of a starless night. He hears in a distant place the words of Shiva: "Star light, star bright, no star I see tonight, dare I may, dare I might, wish upon this wishless night?" The words haunt him as he falls through the darkness...

...and the darkness that cloaks him becomes the dress of the woman in black, enveloping him in its endless folds and creases. He rises, and the woman in black looks at him with eyes of ice and steel, and a voice speaks: "They are the same, but different." He looks to the skies above, and two stars shine brightly...

...and the voice becomes that of Zidaniel - not as his enemy, but as his teacher: "What difference between right and wrong, success and failure? There is no difference." And Zidaniel's voice laughs, a hideous sound that echoes through his mind, pounding against his skull with the force that only regret can bring...

...and the laughter melts into the sound of Shiva's laughter, and his heart melts at the sound. She is there before him, standing next to the woman in black. And he sees that they are the same, but different: Shiva is garbed in her blue cloak, and the woman in black in her black dress; Shiva's eyes are mirthful and mysterious, while the woman in black's are cold and cunning; but in both, he sees a sense of caring, a sense of purpose, and he feels as though he is truly at home...

...somewhere, a voice speaks, but the words are meaningless, echoes of a future that has been lost or a past that is yet to come...

...the soul of the traveler rests for a time, losing itself in the eyes of his star and his muse. But which is the muse and which is the star, he cannot fathom...

 

[WizWrm]

Velbrik steps softly through the depths of an emerald-green forest. Around him, the towering trees seem almost oppressive, and a strangely pungent odor permeates the air. The forest is silent - here, no birds are chirping, and no squirrels scamper underfoot. He turns his head and sniffs to either side, trying to determine the source of the tainted aroma, but cannot. Velbrik shrugs and continues walking, unbothered by the scent.

As he turns around a bend (what trail am I following? Velbrik asks himself), a splotch of color in the distance - deep blue - is starkly visible against the greens and browns of the forest. As Velbrik comes closer, he recognizes it as a person, and still closer, he notices that it is someone familiar. From a distance of a hundred yards, Velbrik calls out, "Uncle! So you've become lost, too. Tell me, what is this forest we have found?"

The blue-clad person makes a sudden flurry of movement and vanishes from sight. Velbrik opens his mouth to speak, but is interrupted by a deep and guttural roar. He whirls to face the source, only to discover his uncle perched upon a nearby tree, wearing a torn blue tabard over ragged peasants' clothing. On the tabard is the crest of Medibaria, but it has been ripped through the center.

"Uncle, what are you...." Velbrik trails off as he suddenly notices large, reptilian wings sprouting from his uncle's back. They blend in so perfectly with the background vegetation that he hadn't noticed them. He steps back in shock, staring at his uncle. Now Velbrik notices two other things: cat-slitted eyes (or reptilian, perhaps? thinks Velbrik), and sharp claws, which his uncle is playing with, extending and retracting.

"I warned you, remember!" he says in the same voice that Velbrik recalls so vividly. It's low-pitched but somewhat nasal. "While you've been gallivanting around the countryside, fighting orcs and ogres, getting hopelessly lost....look what it's done to me!"

"What are you talking about, Uncle?" asks Velbrik. "Who did this to you?"

"Who do you think? Who could have done it? No petty wizard, certainly. Do you remember what I said to you?" He pauses as if waiting for an answer, but suddenly a look of horror suffuses his face. "THERE! YOU HAVE IT!" Velbrik's uncle points an accusatory finger at Velbrik. "I SEE IT!" Before Velbrik can respond, his uncle breathes in deeply, then exhales sharply, almost as if he were spitting. A green cloud of gas quickly fills the air around both of them, and Velbrik doubles over, choking on the acidic vapors. His vision blurs and he feels intensely dizzy, but Velbrik suddenly recognizes that the gas has the same odor that he'd noticed before, the one pervading the entire forest. Before falling into unconsciousness, a memory floats across his mind.

Velbrik sees his uncle, younger and entirely normal; untransformed by 'it.' He's visiting Velbrik's family in Tharol, eating at the dinner table and chuckling merrily at some joke. Suddenly, he turns toward Velbrik, his face serious. "I forgot to mention this earlier, but I'd think it might be good for you to do a little research about your family history. Always good to know one's ancestors," he says, smiling. "Though I see how that may not be so exciting for a lad of your age. I really think it'd do you well, though. You could even make something of a project out of it, and while you're in the library, you could spend time reading about something a bit more interesting. Maybe some monstrous creature, perhaps...dragons? Now there's a fascinating subject!" He grins and pats Velbrik on the shoulder. A teenage Velbrik nods and smiles nervously, glancing over at his parents. His mother's expression seems to indicate a lack of interest, but he is startled to see his father scowling deeply at his brother, Velbrik's jolly uncle. The vision fades into blackness.

 

[GnomeWorks]

Wonder if Sparky's back yet...?

 

[doghead]

Wonder if Sparky's back yet...?

End of this week I thought.

Of more concern is that TH hasn't been seen in any of his games since he got back at the beginning of the month. His last post was about the 2nd of July. I swear that Jaan is cursed.

 

[WizWrm]

Brother Shatterstone stopped by in the General thread last Sunday (the 11th) to say:

Hey All, I hate to interrupt your normal gaming talk but I got an email the other day from Thomas Hobbes and thought I would pass word that TH is indeed alive, but that his PC was having issues. He hoped to have it fixed within the week, but that it was out of his hands.

 

[doghead]

Yeah, TH lives.

For a minute I thought that his PC refered to his player character. That had me wondering. But its sorted now.

 

[Otakkun]

Yeah, TH lives.

For a minute I thought that his PC refered to his player character. That had me wondering. But its sorted now.

heh .... well, let's hope we can get this game moving once again

 

[Sparky]

OOC: I'm back! And married! Sorry for no IC stuff just now, headed off to the discussion thread to say I'm back.

 

[doghead]

ooc: Hey Sparky. Welcome back.