Valik
Professor of Alchemy
Star Wars Roleplay: Chaos
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Seydon of Arda
Raquor'daan
"They've gone. Please come."
~Three Days Later~
Tingel Arm - [Indigo Reef System] - Free Space~
Arda
Arda. Ocean world. Cradle of men and atolls. Light from winked off the silicate and diamond dust of dusky, somber Andromak. It was Arda's second largest orbiting body, the darkest of three brother-moons. Andromak's sunward face was mottled in complexion: great fields of black ice-soot beside calcium deposits. Ridge-line bumps showed when Andromak swung around for a profile glance. Sunlight struck over remnants of pristine hill-crenelations, like the dulled teeth of some ancient, upended jawbone stuck to the lunar rock. Across an ice-flat stirred upraised trails of disturbed gravel. Following the wake-plume showcased a small, jet-sliver racing across the surface valleys. It approached a shallow bank of chalk-white peaks cast in glaring shadow by sunlight's contrast. The sliver glowed a spurt of afterburner thrust and rose high into a departing ascent.
The sliver was an SH-LS-78 Winter Eagle. A winged length of proud, riveted lines that spoke of angular, hawkish countenance. Its prow was coated in kissing stencils showcasing a long, fanged maw. Beneath the prow hung a ribbon tongue painted as crimson as a blood-poison gem. It called itself 'Iron Snake' and it prowled Levantine space with all the caution of a haunting serpent.
It descended in through the upper atmosphere, slicing into an opening of cloud-cover across the western island-chains. They wove around a central island that, from upon high, resembled a scimitar in profile. Arda possessed no weather-station satellite instruments to give a forecast of local storm systems. Locals put the suggestion to vote, simply telling that any concerns to do with unpredictable Su-enae would be answered as they came. They hadn't the gumption to learn the complications of maintaining ground-side receiver stations. Facilities that were prone to salt damage, rust and other oxidizing degradations. All that was kept under watch was a single communications tower, keyed to an array on the far side of Moon-Memnes.
From there, they could call for aid. Three days prior, they had. And then chillingly, further contact went as dark as the shadows of the great coral ravines.
The Iron Snake landed on a small harried clearing upon Segey, a moderate islands bordered south and north-east by paired lagoons. Heavy landing stanchions gently sunk into the soft clay and sand, hissing gusts of hydraulic pressure. Great propulsion engines eased into idle before shutting off entirely. They ticked in a slow 4/4 time as systems turned over, cooling, shutting down as reactor-power fizzled. A debark-ramp swung out from behind the ear of the fore-mounted cockpit. One solitary figure emerged in a quick run down onto the earth, churning up grit-dirt and tide smoothed throwing-pebbles against his striated boot soles.
His name was Seroth, and he came prepared for his function armed. Slung on his belt rested a particular combination of tomahawk and sheathe-knife, a long vibrosword stowed across his shoulder down against his left hip. He was swiftly belting pivot-blade gauntlets onto his forearms, thrice-checking their function, whilst a long gunstock warclub idled in restless twitch against his right hip-catch. Dry-fire pistols waited in their leather and stud crafted holsters. An ancient, oiled, bayonet fixed slug-shotgun fell down into his waiting hands and was chambered for shot in a curt rack.
Last he came through, Segey hosted three villages of some three hundred souls individually. They kept by the shoreline, situated a half-click landward behind shored up dike-walls constructed of fire-hardened clay bricks, Ardan-bamboo, and great elastic palm fronds. Seroth came hurrying up through a worn trail used by Sendan to access creek-docks to shoot their massive hunting canoes out into the surf. Usually... you could hear a village in activity by more than five kilometers. Voices, song, echoes of industry. Bonesaws chewing through wood, fashioned hammers walloping pegs down into the skeletal boat-spines.
Nothing. Seroth stopped short atop a sand hill swaying with kelp-grass, looking down. ...The dike walls had been slugged to oblivion. Swathes of stilted houses were torn and left in smouldering ruins. Snapped harpoons laid half-buried in the underbrush. Long slicks of dried, clumped gravel and sand showed off remnants of heat-spill. Bloodshed...
The lad gently snuggled his right-finger in behind his slug-guns trigger guard and slowly began to pick his way into the carnage...
@[member="Valik"]
~Three Days Later~
Tingel Arm - [Indigo Reef System] - Free Space~
Arda
Arda. Ocean world. Cradle of men and atolls. Light from winked off the silicate and diamond dust of dusky, somber Andromak. It was Arda's second largest orbiting body, the darkest of three brother-moons. Andromak's sunward face was mottled in complexion: great fields of black ice-soot beside calcium deposits. Ridge-line bumps showed when Andromak swung around for a profile glance. Sunlight struck over remnants of pristine hill-crenelations, like the dulled teeth of some ancient, upended jawbone stuck to the lunar rock. Across an ice-flat stirred upraised trails of disturbed gravel. Following the wake-plume showcased a small, jet-sliver racing across the surface valleys. It approached a shallow bank of chalk-white peaks cast in glaring shadow by sunlight's contrast. The sliver glowed a spurt of afterburner thrust and rose high into a departing ascent.
The sliver was an SH-LS-78 Winter Eagle. A winged length of proud, riveted lines that spoke of angular, hawkish countenance. Its prow was coated in kissing stencils showcasing a long, fanged maw. Beneath the prow hung a ribbon tongue painted as crimson as a blood-poison gem. It called itself 'Iron Snake' and it prowled Levantine space with all the caution of a haunting serpent.
It descended in through the upper atmosphere, slicing into an opening of cloud-cover across the western island-chains. They wove around a central island that, from upon high, resembled a scimitar in profile. Arda possessed no weather-station satellite instruments to give a forecast of local storm systems. Locals put the suggestion to vote, simply telling that any concerns to do with unpredictable Su-enae would be answered as they came. They hadn't the gumption to learn the complications of maintaining ground-side receiver stations. Facilities that were prone to salt damage, rust and other oxidizing degradations. All that was kept under watch was a single communications tower, keyed to an array on the far side of Moon-Memnes.
From there, they could call for aid. Three days prior, they had. And then chillingly, further contact went as dark as the shadows of the great coral ravines.
The Iron Snake landed on a small harried clearing upon Segey, a moderate islands bordered south and north-east by paired lagoons. Heavy landing stanchions gently sunk into the soft clay and sand, hissing gusts of hydraulic pressure. Great propulsion engines eased into idle before shutting off entirely. They ticked in a slow 4/4 time as systems turned over, cooling, shutting down as reactor-power fizzled. A debark-ramp swung out from behind the ear of the fore-mounted cockpit. One solitary figure emerged in a quick run down onto the earth, churning up grit-dirt and tide smoothed throwing-pebbles against his striated boot soles.
His name was Seroth, and he came prepared for his function armed. Slung on his belt rested a particular combination of tomahawk and sheathe-knife, a long vibrosword stowed across his shoulder down against his left hip. He was swiftly belting pivot-blade gauntlets onto his forearms, thrice-checking their function, whilst a long gunstock warclub idled in restless twitch against his right hip-catch. Dry-fire pistols waited in their leather and stud crafted holsters. An ancient, oiled, bayonet fixed slug-shotgun fell down into his waiting hands and was chambered for shot in a curt rack.
Last he came through, Segey hosted three villages of some three hundred souls individually. They kept by the shoreline, situated a half-click landward behind shored up dike-walls constructed of fire-hardened clay bricks, Ardan-bamboo, and great elastic palm fronds. Seroth came hurrying up through a worn trail used by Sendan to access creek-docks to shoot their massive hunting canoes out into the surf. Usually... you could hear a village in activity by more than five kilometers. Voices, song, echoes of industry. Bonesaws chewing through wood, fashioned hammers walloping pegs down into the skeletal boat-spines.
Nothing. Seroth stopped short atop a sand hill swaying with kelp-grass, looking down. ...The dike walls had been slugged to oblivion. Swathes of stilted houses were torn and left in smouldering ruins. Snapped harpoons laid half-buried in the underbrush. Long slicks of dried, clumped gravel and sand showed off remnants of heat-spill. Bloodshed...
The lad gently snuggled his right-finger in behind his slug-guns trigger guard and slowly began to pick his way into the carnage...
@[member="Valik"]
Valik
Professor of Alchemy
As Seroth would get closer and closer to the three villages of Segey he'd find what passed for roads and trials burnt, swept over, interfered with. While it could be seen that a large group of people traveled through there it would be unclear where they were coming from, where they were going, why so many were moving grouped together. With little other in the way of clues other then destruction he'd likely take the same path he was before, towards the trio of villages. Upon arrival he'd spot blaster scoring, wooden homes partially burning, and the musk of the recently dead would fill his scents.
Upon further examination he'd realizing that the dead lying on the battle where all men, and all with weapons near their corpses. Warriors the lot of them, some were charred, perhaps a sign of electrocution, some were impaled with and into various objects, mayhaps a sign of telekinesis, while others would have perfectly round holes in their body, amputations flawlessly cauterized. Whatever killed them probably had the Force, perhaps was a even a Sith, if only due the obvious signs of the weapon he killed so many with so ruthlessly.
If Seroth continued to examine to ghost town of a village his ears might warn him to a faint cry hiding in one of the nearby huts. An investigation would find a lone boy three, perhaps four seasons away from coming of age. Kneeling over one of the dead he'd water the charred body with his tears, having seen what he'd describe as a tall but gaunt demon, killing those strong enough to protest and capturing the weak, herding them to a cavern far to the west like cattle for a meal, or perhaps something far worse.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Deep in the underground of a cavern, within a makeshift lab filled with an untold amount of prisons, Ardans would quiver in fear, silently watching the Alchemist as he went to one of the many cells around them. Unlike the others this one didn't contain dozens of fisher's wives and children, but instead two Quarren, a brother and sister. Valik looked at the male, then at the female, then rose a hand and from his belt flew a metal cylinder, before a scarlet beam found it's way through the females gut. In fear the quarren would back pedal, before finding himself against a wall with nowhere left to go.
Raising his left hand he cupped his finger together, creating a vicegrip around the man's throat before his feet would gradually leave the ground. He put his tenatacly hand around his neck, trying to fight off the invisible force, but to no avail. Valik inched closer and closer before pulling a syringe out of his pocket, and injecting the quarren with some sort of drug. Letting go of his choke the quarren would fall to the floor and breath, but find that was all that was in his power. While limp and powerless, he could see everything around him, hear the gasps of the Ardans around him, feel the uneven stone beneath his moist skin.
A force from under him picked him up, the Quarren spotting Valik's hand raised as he levitated above the ground. He was carried this way a few feet, before being lifted higher and placed on a table, his back against the cold steel. Between the size of the table and maddening glint in the torturer's eyes he felt he was about to be the subject of a live autopsy.
It was a pity Valik was not that merciful.
@[member="Seroth Ur-Rahn"]
Upon further examination he'd realizing that the dead lying on the battle where all men, and all with weapons near their corpses. Warriors the lot of them, some were charred, perhaps a sign of electrocution, some were impaled with and into various objects, mayhaps a sign of telekinesis, while others would have perfectly round holes in their body, amputations flawlessly cauterized. Whatever killed them probably had the Force, perhaps was a even a Sith, if only due the obvious signs of the weapon he killed so many with so ruthlessly.
If Seroth continued to examine to ghost town of a village his ears might warn him to a faint cry hiding in one of the nearby huts. An investigation would find a lone boy three, perhaps four seasons away from coming of age. Kneeling over one of the dead he'd water the charred body with his tears, having seen what he'd describe as a tall but gaunt demon, killing those strong enough to protest and capturing the weak, herding them to a cavern far to the west like cattle for a meal, or perhaps something far worse.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Deep in the underground of a cavern, within a makeshift lab filled with an untold amount of prisons, Ardans would quiver in fear, silently watching the Alchemist as he went to one of the many cells around them. Unlike the others this one didn't contain dozens of fisher's wives and children, but instead two Quarren, a brother and sister. Valik looked at the male, then at the female, then rose a hand and from his belt flew a metal cylinder, before a scarlet beam found it's way through the females gut. In fear the quarren would back pedal, before finding himself against a wall with nowhere left to go.
Raising his left hand he cupped his finger together, creating a vicegrip around the man's throat before his feet would gradually leave the ground. He put his tenatacly hand around his neck, trying to fight off the invisible force, but to no avail. Valik inched closer and closer before pulling a syringe out of his pocket, and injecting the quarren with some sort of drug. Letting go of his choke the quarren would fall to the floor and breath, but find that was all that was in his power. While limp and powerless, he could see everything around him, hear the gasps of the Ardans around him, feel the uneven stone beneath his moist skin.
A force from under him picked him up, the Quarren spotting Valik's hand raised as he levitated above the ground. He was carried this way a few feet, before being lifted higher and placed on a table, his back against the cold steel. Between the size of the table and maddening glint in the torturer's eyes he felt he was about to be the subject of a live autopsy.
It was a pity Valik was not that merciful.
@[member="Seroth Ur-Rahn"]
Seydon of Arda
Raquor'daan
There was a raw odour of ozone. Certain pockets of eddying air behind what remained standing for the stilt-huts stank of burned air, and not from the glowing collections of patchy, burning grass roof-thatches. It stood blankly apart from aromas of cooking flesh, the saline musk of birdlime off the shore. The lad knew it from his times on Saijo, Terminus, Nar Shaddaa, a dozen small battlefields where he faced off against foes toting heavier weaponry than his simple sword. It was the discharge of blaster-tech or at the least, something akin. Seroth's face creased deep into troubled glowers. Segey was a baffling scene and not simply for the array of carnage.
The tracks were diverging into chaotic patterns stamped down into the sand and grit. Impressions left by naked toes or smoothed flaps told him the directions of hurtling locals. They either strolled barefoot, calloused against the hot earth, or took their strolls in sandals crafted from spongy tappa-wood. Others ground treaded boot-soles with careless pace. By size and by their stride, perhaps there had been a half-dozen gunmen armed and methodically mowing their way through the encampment. Grenades had detonated, to leave behind sand-fused glassy pits smoking gently. Hurled bodies were left half-smashed through tended cooking troughs. Significant portions sustained trauma resulting from blistering blaster salvos. Cooked bone poked like broken tree stalks up through cracked, heat-glazed flesh, caked with flash-fried blood.
Others still suffered from too-clean blows. Seroth strolled to a set of lain torso's vacant of limbs and attaching throats. Bare skin told him their stories: showers of arcing energy peeling back the flesh and gouging furrows up their muscle. He picked at a lost hand. It'd been taken, cleanly, meat, bone, and marrow cauterized perfectly. Not blastech. Guns of that line couldn't conceive the sort of necessary elegance required for such... ritual dismemberment. But he did know of one device. Ordinarily, they were constructed in housing casements about twenty five to thirty centimeters in length, fitted with emitter stacks wired down to a trio of set focusing crystals. ...But who would brandish a lightsaber here, on quiet Arda? Certainly none of the Conclave...
"[Momma, please... Oh Su-enae, I'm sorry... I meant to take out the scallop shells... I did... I'm sorry...]"
The lad stood up and stole up silently to a low shop stall. Its roof was partially collapsed and suffering from several structural splits inflicted by weapons fire. Inside, behind the low ouba-wood counter, someone was sniffling. Seroth could make out the shape of a dark body dressed in frond-shorts, weeping. At his knees was a flash-charred corpse...
At his knock, the boy looked close to jumping free through the roof. Seroth's wrap against the counter startled him to a terrified countenance. He leapt back, trying to flee into the umber shadows behind. His eyes were almost too dark, too bright, teeth flashing in horrified grimace. The hunter swiftly crossed his hands in the 'Tidal Shake', murmuring gently. "Tide Below..."
"[...Tide Above...]" The child answered, stuttering. "[...You are not them...?]"
"No. I am not," Seroth eased the child out of the stall. "But who are 'them'...?"
"[Am... Are they still there...? Out there...?]" He looked around the lad's hip with concentrated distrust. "[It smells so bad...]"
"Don't look," Seroth told him, taking his shoulder in a hand. He lead them behind a taller stilt-hut and bade him sit for a moment.
"'Them'?"
"[Aye, yeah... Some men, like... Like you, but not. They arrive the way it's said you come, down from the sky on the backs of strange canoes. But... Then they came up from the beach... And people... They started to kill...]" The child began, in halting breaths.
"[Struck folk with these... these things, that spat the fury of Calabed... Struck them down and dead, tore them up like ravine-sharks... But one of them was different... He was a man... But he had the eyes of the Witch in his head... Touched by black spirits...]"
"Tell me about that one," Seroth insisted.
"[Well... He had like a club...]" The child murmured. "[But it was like he'd caught a flash of lightning, slaved it to this hunk of... something. Like what you wear on your belt. The axe, its head, the shine its made of... He bid the lightning come out and he cut down whoever came up to him... And... And then he took that lightning, and bid it come from his hands... Folks were falling on their knees... Choking, but I couldn't see what was hurting them... Killed all the men... Bade all the children, and their mothers and other women folk... Took them away like they were a catch of fang-salmon...]"
"[Where?]"
A shaky, tiny fist pointed inland to where the foliage and underbrush was disturbed in a long, trampling line. The next quarter of an hour, Seroth spent foraging for provisions. Foods that wouldn't perish from the sog of salt water, fresh water in fashioned coconut flasks, rain-suits, and at least one untarnished compass. He bid the boy to follow him across the headland, onto the beach-head proper. Supplies were kept slung in a makeshift thong of sewn grass-blades, with toughened lengths of tigerfish gut-line. There laid a small fleet of hollowed dugouts. A majority were unmolested, save for a pair burning from errant cones of fire. Seroth piled in the supplies, then settled the boy where his arms could reach at the row-oars.
"[You're sending me away...?" He whined. "Where am I to go?]"
"Follow the coastline, child," Seroth instructed. "Go on 'till you reach the next village. If there's anyone about, seek the Kee. Tell him what happened here, what you saw. But keep your dugout ready, somewhere safe, hidden. If what happened here come to the next village, go. Row out the lagoons, and make your way to another village. Follow the reef-chains."
"[But... But I don't want to run...]"
"I don't want you too either. But it's not safe enough to remain, and your mother would not forgive me if I let you stay. Let you become part of Calabed. Are you savvy?"
"[Yes...]"
"Go then."
He did. Seroth stood watch upon a swell of drift-wood, kelp laced across his boots. The lad was stroking his oar-rhythm along famously. In time, another quarter of an hour, he was a racing streak hurtling his way northward along the coastline. He would need sharp eyes to watch out for ubiquitous sand-bars, raised stacks of submerged rock, sharpened reef edges... A dozen hazards that any native Ardan had mastery defining, avoiding. The lad shouldered his slug-gun and hugged the worn woodstock in against his shoulder. From the interior, purpose was calling. Seroth waded through the torn remnants of now lost Segey and on into the lush headlands. Despite the swell of sun in the sky... Something too cool and drafty was billowing from the shadows of the shrubbery.
@[member="Valik"]
The tracks were diverging into chaotic patterns stamped down into the sand and grit. Impressions left by naked toes or smoothed flaps told him the directions of hurtling locals. They either strolled barefoot, calloused against the hot earth, or took their strolls in sandals crafted from spongy tappa-wood. Others ground treaded boot-soles with careless pace. By size and by their stride, perhaps there had been a half-dozen gunmen armed and methodically mowing their way through the encampment. Grenades had detonated, to leave behind sand-fused glassy pits smoking gently. Hurled bodies were left half-smashed through tended cooking troughs. Significant portions sustained trauma resulting from blistering blaster salvos. Cooked bone poked like broken tree stalks up through cracked, heat-glazed flesh, caked with flash-fried blood.
Others still suffered from too-clean blows. Seroth strolled to a set of lain torso's vacant of limbs and attaching throats. Bare skin told him their stories: showers of arcing energy peeling back the flesh and gouging furrows up their muscle. He picked at a lost hand. It'd been taken, cleanly, meat, bone, and marrow cauterized perfectly. Not blastech. Guns of that line couldn't conceive the sort of necessary elegance required for such... ritual dismemberment. But he did know of one device. Ordinarily, they were constructed in housing casements about twenty five to thirty centimeters in length, fitted with emitter stacks wired down to a trio of set focusing crystals. ...But who would brandish a lightsaber here, on quiet Arda? Certainly none of the Conclave...
"[Momma, please... Oh Su-enae, I'm sorry... I meant to take out the scallop shells... I did... I'm sorry...]"
The lad stood up and stole up silently to a low shop stall. Its roof was partially collapsed and suffering from several structural splits inflicted by weapons fire. Inside, behind the low ouba-wood counter, someone was sniffling. Seroth could make out the shape of a dark body dressed in frond-shorts, weeping. At his knees was a flash-charred corpse...
At his knock, the boy looked close to jumping free through the roof. Seroth's wrap against the counter startled him to a terrified countenance. He leapt back, trying to flee into the umber shadows behind. His eyes were almost too dark, too bright, teeth flashing in horrified grimace. The hunter swiftly crossed his hands in the 'Tidal Shake', murmuring gently. "Tide Below..."
"[...Tide Above...]" The child answered, stuttering. "[...You are not them...?]"
"No. I am not," Seroth eased the child out of the stall. "But who are 'them'...?"
"[Am... Are they still there...? Out there...?]" He looked around the lad's hip with concentrated distrust. "[It smells so bad...]"
"Don't look," Seroth told him, taking his shoulder in a hand. He lead them behind a taller stilt-hut and bade him sit for a moment.
"'Them'?"
"[Aye, yeah... Some men, like... Like you, but not. They arrive the way it's said you come, down from the sky on the backs of strange canoes. But... Then they came up from the beach... And people... They started to kill...]" The child began, in halting breaths.
"[Struck folk with these... these things, that spat the fury of Calabed... Struck them down and dead, tore them up like ravine-sharks... But one of them was different... He was a man... But he had the eyes of the Witch in his head... Touched by black spirits...]"
"Tell me about that one," Seroth insisted.
"[Well... He had like a club...]" The child murmured. "[But it was like he'd caught a flash of lightning, slaved it to this hunk of... something. Like what you wear on your belt. The axe, its head, the shine its made of... He bid the lightning come out and he cut down whoever came up to him... And... And then he took that lightning, and bid it come from his hands... Folks were falling on their knees... Choking, but I couldn't see what was hurting them... Killed all the men... Bade all the children, and their mothers and other women folk... Took them away like they were a catch of fang-salmon...]"
"[Where?]"
A shaky, tiny fist pointed inland to where the foliage and underbrush was disturbed in a long, trampling line. The next quarter of an hour, Seroth spent foraging for provisions. Foods that wouldn't perish from the sog of salt water, fresh water in fashioned coconut flasks, rain-suits, and at least one untarnished compass. He bid the boy to follow him across the headland, onto the beach-head proper. Supplies were kept slung in a makeshift thong of sewn grass-blades, with toughened lengths of tigerfish gut-line. There laid a small fleet of hollowed dugouts. A majority were unmolested, save for a pair burning from errant cones of fire. Seroth piled in the supplies, then settled the boy where his arms could reach at the row-oars.
"[You're sending me away...?" He whined. "Where am I to go?]"
"Follow the coastline, child," Seroth instructed. "Go on 'till you reach the next village. If there's anyone about, seek the Kee. Tell him what happened here, what you saw. But keep your dugout ready, somewhere safe, hidden. If what happened here come to the next village, go. Row out the lagoons, and make your way to another village. Follow the reef-chains."
"[But... But I don't want to run...]"
"I don't want you too either. But it's not safe enough to remain, and your mother would not forgive me if I let you stay. Let you become part of Calabed. Are you savvy?"
"[Yes...]"
"Go then."
He did. Seroth stood watch upon a swell of drift-wood, kelp laced across his boots. The lad was stroking his oar-rhythm along famously. In time, another quarter of an hour, he was a racing streak hurtling his way northward along the coastline. He would need sharp eyes to watch out for ubiquitous sand-bars, raised stacks of submerged rock, sharpened reef edges... A dozen hazards that any native Ardan had mastery defining, avoiding. The lad shouldered his slug-gun and hugged the worn woodstock in against his shoulder. From the interior, purpose was calling. Seroth waded through the torn remnants of now lost Segey and on into the lush headlands. Despite the swell of sun in the sky... Something too cool and drafty was billowing from the shadows of the shrubbery.
@[member="Valik"]
Valik
Professor of Alchemy
As Seroth followed the boy's directions he'd find himself heading through a tropical forest. As he progressed he'd soon realize that though the Force did not tell him such, he was not alone. Valik had recruited some assistance to help with gathering the locals, monitoring supplies, and ensuring his tendencies were uninterrupted. Organic assistance however, was too prone to having a moral crisis against what he'd be doing, and droid would be far too conspicuous on a primitive world such as this. Thus, a compromise was made, and HRD's waited out in the forests, with check-points manned and sniper-rifles ready. It'd make the trek harder, but common sense would show that the snipers weren't there for their own pleasure, they had to be protecting something, some position, giving Seroth some direction on where to go, albeit a heavily guarded one.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Though the quarren couldn't move, his wrists and legs were still clamped hard against the cold steel of the examination table. He could see up, left, right, all around him, and all he could see where panicked primitive human, save for the one who seemed to wish to play god with science. He'd been prodded and poked in more ways than he knew possible before his kidnapping by the two metal she-droids, but he had a feeling none of that past would prepare him for this.
"I don't believe you understand how lucky you are Quarren." The Scientist said as he moved about, pacing around the man as he prepared some sort of syringe, with a fluid he couldn't recognize.
"I have altered many metals before, made sabers, armor, weapons, but you. You are my first delving into the creation of a Sith Spawn." He said, with a disturbing amount of interest and pride in his voice. This man . . . this thing . . . was a Sith. He thought they'd been wiped out by the Jedi on Korriban, and the Mandalorians on Dromund Kass. Was he going to make him a beast? To fight his war against the Jedi?
"Though you don't know it, you have the Force Quarren. One day you will be a great Sith, more powerful than me in many ways. But today, I am your master, your creator, and the source of all your hatred and fear." He continued, before the Quarren felt the syringe dig into a vein on what hillbillies referred to as the 'elbow pit'. The foreign substance entered his body, coursed through up to his head, before the scientist put a hand on his face, and he felt his tentacles begin to expand, more began to grow, painfully popping out of his body. He began to feel . . . excitement from the scientist, as if he could feel his very emotions. What he did was painful, horrific, but gave him something new, some new form of sense.
"You will be my creation, and my creations are flawless, powerful, dark. You'd best hope that my expectations are met, or you will begin to understand there are far worse fates than death."
@[member="Seroth Ur-Rahn"]
_________________________________________________________________________________
Though the quarren couldn't move, his wrists and legs were still clamped hard against the cold steel of the examination table. He could see up, left, right, all around him, and all he could see where panicked primitive human, save for the one who seemed to wish to play god with science. He'd been prodded and poked in more ways than he knew possible before his kidnapping by the two metal she-droids, but he had a feeling none of that past would prepare him for this.
"I don't believe you understand how lucky you are Quarren." The Scientist said as he moved about, pacing around the man as he prepared some sort of syringe, with a fluid he couldn't recognize.
"I have altered many metals before, made sabers, armor, weapons, but you. You are my first delving into the creation of a Sith Spawn." He said, with a disturbing amount of interest and pride in his voice. This man . . . this thing . . . was a Sith. He thought they'd been wiped out by the Jedi on Korriban, and the Mandalorians on Dromund Kass. Was he going to make him a beast? To fight his war against the Jedi?
"Though you don't know it, you have the Force Quarren. One day you will be a great Sith, more powerful than me in many ways. But today, I am your master, your creator, and the source of all your hatred and fear." He continued, before the Quarren felt the syringe dig into a vein on what hillbillies referred to as the 'elbow pit'. The foreign substance entered his body, coursed through up to his head, before the scientist put a hand on his face, and he felt his tentacles begin to expand, more began to grow, painfully popping out of his body. He began to feel . . . excitement from the scientist, as if he could feel his very emotions. What he did was painful, horrific, but gave him something new, some new form of sense.
"You will be my creation, and my creations are flawless, powerful, dark. You'd best hope that my expectations are met, or you will begin to understand there are far worse fates than death."
@[member="Seroth Ur-Rahn"]
Seydon of Arda
Raquor'daan
The island ran fifteen kilometers in a gentle curve, ending on a stacked 'hilt' of upraised basalt and pumice rock. Seroth waded through the interior as briskly as he dared. The Ardan noon hour had rendered the undergrowth into a viscous arena choked with clammy air. Moisture ran from the high oroub-trees, planted thickly in impassable copse either side of the deer-run trail. Sunlight peered in lancing shafts driving down through passages in the shading canopy. Those same shades harbored motley crews of ticking bludflies. Their stridulations sounded out into a singular, hoarse croak of insect buzz. Every square meter of unpatterned fern-bush and thickets of still shrubbery harbored unseen microcosms: little ecologies of insectoid, reptilian, and even mammalian life. Something darkly furred, spurring on a set of six-legs, skittered out of his way.
Someone in the last week had moved bodies up through portions of jungle forestry. At his toes, Seroth could read small stories of massed foot-falls being driven on by heavier bipeds, performing rough shepherd work. Leaf and small woody fatsia were broken, slashed and bruised by hurried footfalls. Lengths of torn grass-plaid clothing and shark-scale slip-ons littered portions of spattered mud. The lad paused, kneeling gently into a soft patch of azure moss. A hunter's work relied on an understanding, appreciation, and application of detail. From the haphazard splay of dozens of foot-tracks, the sojourn hadn't been particularly organized. More akin to maneuvering cattle than human bodies. Interpretively, he hazarded at last three score locals had been put to the long walk into Segey's hinterland. They'd been running from the space in several displaced foot-falls. His nostrils, with a touch of Forced enhancement, detected a faint dross of panicked sweat on the air. It lingered, past sappy moisture, behind veils of wafting fern spores and nettle pollen.
More worrisome were the evidences left behind in the wake of their 'caretakers'. These particular treads fell too deep against mushes of wetted dirt, clashing what he supposed of their frames. Seroth measured they were tall, pushing six feet, perhaps a half foot further. The weight inconcinnity continued to press worry on his shoulders. His bayonet-point stuck into the earth, playing with one booted sole-print. If these were obese specimens he could let the issue pass, but it was if their frames were a few kilos too-dense. Thick with a substance weightier than compacted muscle. It was akin to tracking droids.
Another half hour's hike and he came upon a grizzly detail. There was a body, laid upright against a lichen-crusted stack of shale. Seroth quickly scanned the perimeter line before he jogged up to the cadaver, hunching down. Sluggun raised, barrel trained on an immediate ten meter 'bubble, he skinned an eye over the unfortunate. He'd been a male, approximately seventeen given his sharp face, still wan with youth. One calve, right, was laid out and terrifically swollen. The meat was tenderized, so awfully bruised as something jarred and poked up at the placid, yellowed skin. A broken shin. Seroth dared a glance back down the trail. Sure enough, a sizable chunk of granite stone was displaced from its mud-sink. ...The lad had misplaced his step, tripped and fell upon the rock grossly. It snapped his tibia. Rendered lame, unfit to continue, one shepherd had stepped and emptied a shot through his eye-socket and out the back of his skull-pate.
Crack!
Seroth's conscience hinted at dangerous potential a split second before he heard a distant optic operate its zoom function. Impossible for ears lacking augment. But he'd kept up an enhanced vigil, tickling his inner-ear organs and bones with wafts of Force energy. The only breathing he could detect was three feet to the south; a red-back 'panhead' snake was resting in its shallow lair, hissing gently. But then there was a metallic clash of metal, mechanism, that didn't match the squelches of vegetable matter and deciduous soft-wood.
He snapped back his head, eyes clenched. The blast-bolt punched into the rock, shattering a three-inch impact plate against the weak shale. Seroth fell back behind the jutting slab, forced onto his chest. He tried a peek round the small crag. The second bolt ripped the air a half-inch above his right ear. A small blend of upright palm-saplings just behind him disintegrated into clouds of whisking slivers. Breathlessly, the lad slowly eased his backbone up against the rock and tried to take stock. He'd one shooter to the we -
Spang!
A second shooter was laying down single-fire cover from an unseen position south by south east. His or her bolt tore up a patch of hair-grass by the lad's knee, spraying up a goodly chunks of earth up into his nostrils. With little option, Seroth braced upon onto a leg and bolted. He proved a shadowy flight whisking between glinting shafts of late noon, golden sunlight. The shooters tried to keep up a tracking arc of fire, foiled by the mess of bog-heat that warped the heat-seeking optics attached to their rifles. Seroth kept up the sprint, practiced care rending plodding footfalls into deathly quiet pats of toes lightly kicking off the jungle floor. He put on a burst, jacked his feet into a solid bit of muddy rock, to hurtled down into an emptied creek ditch.
Then Seroth stilled. Just to listen. ...There. Not-quite-so-silent boot-steps readjusting against lichen scrubs. To his Force-enhanced ears, the squeals of rubber was akin to the grate of a grinding stone. Their rifle-stocks were scraping against make-shift log-tripods. Target seeking... Not entirely sure where precisely their quarry had run. Not a marked advantage. ...But just enough. Seroth rose up onto his haunches in a low crouch, and began to circle round from brush to brush. Soon there was a figure caught in a dead-still draped in camouflaged webbing. They were positioned on a sloped rise on the western banks of raised, sediment hills. He saw them clutched to a similarly painted, long-barreled rifle.
With sure quickness, Seroth turned and took an ascent up a high climb of ribbed palm trees. They shook, swaying just slightly, warping under his weight as he leapt over onto an old Ardan-roan. His boots fell and caught onto his spotted branch, high over the shooter's make-shift nesting. It never heard the slip of gauntlet blades swish into the lad's fingers. Seroth jumped and fell, bending his leap for seven meters. His knees smashed into the shooter's shoulders blades and felled them hard into dirt. One assassin-knife gouged down into the skull occipital bone, the other catching into the spinal collumn of the throat, both ripping.
...Shredding through durasteel plate and techno-organic brain matter. Duraplast edges made fearsome messes of intricate, inlaid circuitry, exposing smashed hydraulic articulation. Severed synth-muscles disgorged white sheets of artificial blood onto murky soil. Not an organic, Seroth now surmised, but close enough. It was a facsimile of synth-flesh sheathes and near-human approximations of mechanics and bodily function. An HRD. Human Replica Droid, or Replicant, Skinjob, alongside a more diversified array of fearful slurs. Small wonder their footsteps sank so heavily on the deer-run. They were another two-hundred pounds heavier than the next healthy standard of human weight.
Seroth jerked his knives from the shuddering skull and throat, disengaged them back into their waiting catches. From his vantage point he could make out squarely the second gunner's nest. Despite the rifle's belying weight, the lad took hold of the jutting pistol grip and fingered the trigger. Shev Rayner, bless his crotchety soul and cussing breath, had taught him the rudimentary basics of targeting fire. The optic sensor calibrated to accommodate his cornea. With surmounting care, he steadied the shiver in his arm until his frame was stiller than the earth idling beneath his waist. Neon-blue cross-hairs came to a dead-stop across a head fitted with earthen-toned balaclava.
...He thumbed the fire-rate from single-shot to two-burst and ticked the view-finder down a half inch.
Cr-Crack! Two solid-mass rounds encased in ionic super-heated blister-coats punched machinery out the second HRD's clavicle and face-plate. Seroth watched it jerk in a torrent of white blood, hissing gouts of blackened hydraulic grease. It stained the surrounding foliage in surreal industrial splotches whilst its feet kicked and stamped in the death-throe. The lad came off the rifle, frowning. At the episodes end, he'd need to recover the Replicants, their weaponry, and give both items a safe disposal. Ardans hadn't yet come upon the advent of gun-powder much less blaster-tech. Their natures were anything but warlike but presumption, laziness, could result in an accident that might awake a tribal schism.
For the meanwhile, they'd lie in semi-permanent repose. Seroth allowed himself one long swig of mineral-laced water from his jerkin. Another minute saw him stuck in a bent crouch, whisking below the meter-tall underbrush with his eyes hawked forward. The hunt wasn't finished. Those three-score villagers were still unaccounted for, and alive or dead, the injustices preyed upon their idyllic life demanded an answer. If they lived, there would be justice.
If he found them slain, there would be vengeance.
Quick as an antelope, Seroth sped on, keeping the point of his bayonet-gun high from his shoulder.
@[member="Valik"]
Someone in the last week had moved bodies up through portions of jungle forestry. At his toes, Seroth could read small stories of massed foot-falls being driven on by heavier bipeds, performing rough shepherd work. Leaf and small woody fatsia were broken, slashed and bruised by hurried footfalls. Lengths of torn grass-plaid clothing and shark-scale slip-ons littered portions of spattered mud. The lad paused, kneeling gently into a soft patch of azure moss. A hunter's work relied on an understanding, appreciation, and application of detail. From the haphazard splay of dozens of foot-tracks, the sojourn hadn't been particularly organized. More akin to maneuvering cattle than human bodies. Interpretively, he hazarded at last three score locals had been put to the long walk into Segey's hinterland. They'd been running from the space in several displaced foot-falls. His nostrils, with a touch of Forced enhancement, detected a faint dross of panicked sweat on the air. It lingered, past sappy moisture, behind veils of wafting fern spores and nettle pollen.
More worrisome were the evidences left behind in the wake of their 'caretakers'. These particular treads fell too deep against mushes of wetted dirt, clashing what he supposed of their frames. Seroth measured they were tall, pushing six feet, perhaps a half foot further. The weight inconcinnity continued to press worry on his shoulders. His bayonet-point stuck into the earth, playing with one booted sole-print. If these were obese specimens he could let the issue pass, but it was if their frames were a few kilos too-dense. Thick with a substance weightier than compacted muscle. It was akin to tracking droids.
Another half hour's hike and he came upon a grizzly detail. There was a body, laid upright against a lichen-crusted stack of shale. Seroth quickly scanned the perimeter line before he jogged up to the cadaver, hunching down. Sluggun raised, barrel trained on an immediate ten meter 'bubble, he skinned an eye over the unfortunate. He'd been a male, approximately seventeen given his sharp face, still wan with youth. One calve, right, was laid out and terrifically swollen. The meat was tenderized, so awfully bruised as something jarred and poked up at the placid, yellowed skin. A broken shin. Seroth dared a glance back down the trail. Sure enough, a sizable chunk of granite stone was displaced from its mud-sink. ...The lad had misplaced his step, tripped and fell upon the rock grossly. It snapped his tibia. Rendered lame, unfit to continue, one shepherd had stepped and emptied a shot through his eye-socket and out the back of his skull-pate.
Crack!
Seroth's conscience hinted at dangerous potential a split second before he heard a distant optic operate its zoom function. Impossible for ears lacking augment. But he'd kept up an enhanced vigil, tickling his inner-ear organs and bones with wafts of Force energy. The only breathing he could detect was three feet to the south; a red-back 'panhead' snake was resting in its shallow lair, hissing gently. But then there was a metallic clash of metal, mechanism, that didn't match the squelches of vegetable matter and deciduous soft-wood.
He snapped back his head, eyes clenched. The blast-bolt punched into the rock, shattering a three-inch impact plate against the weak shale. Seroth fell back behind the jutting slab, forced onto his chest. He tried a peek round the small crag. The second bolt ripped the air a half-inch above his right ear. A small blend of upright palm-saplings just behind him disintegrated into clouds of whisking slivers. Breathlessly, the lad slowly eased his backbone up against the rock and tried to take stock. He'd one shooter to the we -
Spang!
A second shooter was laying down single-fire cover from an unseen position south by south east. His or her bolt tore up a patch of hair-grass by the lad's knee, spraying up a goodly chunks of earth up into his nostrils. With little option, Seroth braced upon onto a leg and bolted. He proved a shadowy flight whisking between glinting shafts of late noon, golden sunlight. The shooters tried to keep up a tracking arc of fire, foiled by the mess of bog-heat that warped the heat-seeking optics attached to their rifles. Seroth kept up the sprint, practiced care rending plodding footfalls into deathly quiet pats of toes lightly kicking off the jungle floor. He put on a burst, jacked his feet into a solid bit of muddy rock, to hurtled down into an emptied creek ditch.
Then Seroth stilled. Just to listen. ...There. Not-quite-so-silent boot-steps readjusting against lichen scrubs. To his Force-enhanced ears, the squeals of rubber was akin to the grate of a grinding stone. Their rifle-stocks were scraping against make-shift log-tripods. Target seeking... Not entirely sure where precisely their quarry had run. Not a marked advantage. ...But just enough. Seroth rose up onto his haunches in a low crouch, and began to circle round from brush to brush. Soon there was a figure caught in a dead-still draped in camouflaged webbing. They were positioned on a sloped rise on the western banks of raised, sediment hills. He saw them clutched to a similarly painted, long-barreled rifle.
With sure quickness, Seroth turned and took an ascent up a high climb of ribbed palm trees. They shook, swaying just slightly, warping under his weight as he leapt over onto an old Ardan-roan. His boots fell and caught onto his spotted branch, high over the shooter's make-shift nesting. It never heard the slip of gauntlet blades swish into the lad's fingers. Seroth jumped and fell, bending his leap for seven meters. His knees smashed into the shooter's shoulders blades and felled them hard into dirt. One assassin-knife gouged down into the skull occipital bone, the other catching into the spinal collumn of the throat, both ripping.
...Shredding through durasteel plate and techno-organic brain matter. Duraplast edges made fearsome messes of intricate, inlaid circuitry, exposing smashed hydraulic articulation. Severed synth-muscles disgorged white sheets of artificial blood onto murky soil. Not an organic, Seroth now surmised, but close enough. It was a facsimile of synth-flesh sheathes and near-human approximations of mechanics and bodily function. An HRD. Human Replica Droid, or Replicant, Skinjob, alongside a more diversified array of fearful slurs. Small wonder their footsteps sank so heavily on the deer-run. They were another two-hundred pounds heavier than the next healthy standard of human weight.
Seroth jerked his knives from the shuddering skull and throat, disengaged them back into their waiting catches. From his vantage point he could make out squarely the second gunner's nest. Despite the rifle's belying weight, the lad took hold of the jutting pistol grip and fingered the trigger. Shev Rayner, bless his crotchety soul and cussing breath, had taught him the rudimentary basics of targeting fire. The optic sensor calibrated to accommodate his cornea. With surmounting care, he steadied the shiver in his arm until his frame was stiller than the earth idling beneath his waist. Neon-blue cross-hairs came to a dead-stop across a head fitted with earthen-toned balaclava.
...He thumbed the fire-rate from single-shot to two-burst and ticked the view-finder down a half inch.
Cr-Crack! Two solid-mass rounds encased in ionic super-heated blister-coats punched machinery out the second HRD's clavicle and face-plate. Seroth watched it jerk in a torrent of white blood, hissing gouts of blackened hydraulic grease. It stained the surrounding foliage in surreal industrial splotches whilst its feet kicked and stamped in the death-throe. The lad came off the rifle, frowning. At the episodes end, he'd need to recover the Replicants, their weaponry, and give both items a safe disposal. Ardans hadn't yet come upon the advent of gun-powder much less blaster-tech. Their natures were anything but warlike but presumption, laziness, could result in an accident that might awake a tribal schism.
For the meanwhile, they'd lie in semi-permanent repose. Seroth allowed himself one long swig of mineral-laced water from his jerkin. Another minute saw him stuck in a bent crouch, whisking below the meter-tall underbrush with his eyes hawked forward. The hunt wasn't finished. Those three-score villagers were still unaccounted for, and alive or dead, the injustices preyed upon their idyllic life demanded an answer. If they lived, there would be justice.
If he found them slain, there would be vengeance.
Quick as an antelope, Seroth sped on, keeping the point of his bayonet-gun high from his shoulder.
@[member="Valik"]
Valik
Professor of Alchemy
With the HRD's on the outside taken down Seroth would find their heavier tracks easy to follow, eventually finding a small cave entrance hidden amongst the tropical brush. In front of the cave he'd find the bodies of a Vanr, Columi, and Nautolan. Each had the smell of being a couple days gone, with marks of shackles on their wrists and above their ankles, tiny rings on their arms and necks, evidence of injections. They were posed, left intentionally, a warning to any would-be Ardan Adventurer. Inside he'd find the cave soon branched into a three-fold fork.
In the left tunnel the rumblings of some perturbed, perhaps caged beast could be heard in the distance. On the right the sound of dripping water echoed as the scent of a spring could be heard. In the middle there was not a sound to be heard, but unlike the left and right their were an array of luminescent fungus growing in the walls. Seroth wouldn't be able to smell or hear what lied within, but as he travelled it's corridors he'd be able to hear it coming. Ultimately there were many paths, one end, but what the journey there entail?
_______________________________
"Did you know that Nautolan Lekku can perceive the pheromones of others?" The scientist said, and things were starting to become clear. His science, his alchemy, this sithspawn concept. He was making the quarren an amalgam of creatures.
"It's a very useful trait, be to able to read one's emotions. You will learn to fuel yourself with this, but first you must learn intelligence." The madman said, his tone more of a teacher than the torturer he was. A hand was placed on his skull. "We'll fix that now."
The Quarren began to scream as his skull was reshaped, his mind quite literally expanding as his triangular head reformed into a new, bulbous shape. Despite the pain he could feel his intelligence rise, blood pumping new life into his brain. Women winced and shielded the eyes and ears of the Ardan Children as his screamed echoed throughout the cage filled laboratory.
@[member="Seroth Ur-Rahn"]
In the left tunnel the rumblings of some perturbed, perhaps caged beast could be heard in the distance. On the right the sound of dripping water echoed as the scent of a spring could be heard. In the middle there was not a sound to be heard, but unlike the left and right their were an array of luminescent fungus growing in the walls. Seroth wouldn't be able to smell or hear what lied within, but as he travelled it's corridors he'd be able to hear it coming. Ultimately there were many paths, one end, but what the journey there entail?
_______________________________
"Did you know that Nautolan Lekku can perceive the pheromones of others?" The scientist said, and things were starting to become clear. His science, his alchemy, this sithspawn concept. He was making the quarren an amalgam of creatures.
"It's a very useful trait, be to able to read one's emotions. You will learn to fuel yourself with this, but first you must learn intelligence." The madman said, his tone more of a teacher than the torturer he was. A hand was placed on his skull. "We'll fix that now."
The Quarren began to scream as his skull was reshaped, his mind quite literally expanding as his triangular head reformed into a new, bulbous shape. Despite the pain he could feel his intelligence rise, blood pumping new life into his brain. Women winced and shielded the eyes and ears of the Ardan Children as his screamed echoed throughout the cage filled laboratory.
@[member="Seroth Ur-Rahn"]
Seydon of Arda
Raquor'daan
The cave was a crooked mouth, hanging with broken crenelations, like teeth savaged down to animal-points by a file. Examples of soaked lichen clung and let down their creeps of hanging, mossy hair over the granite. There were only a handful of able animal-trails leading in towards the rocky entry... But all stopped and turned back when the long-dried simian and cervinae dirt-prints reached approximately five meters from the descending tunnel. Perhaps the animals were privy to the sensation too. As Seroth loomed closer, surrounding forestry began to quiet. Insects ceased chirping, halted rubbing their wing-cases. The thousand and one examples of tropical avians stood watch. About as life-like a drainage gargoyles, just peering down with dark, beady eyes. Just the wind spoke, drawing down from Segeys lonesome spine of half-kilometer basalt mountains.
It flitted close to the laid's ear whispering cold benediction.
Seroth slung back his slug-gun. His hands reached, taking up Seydakin, Huntsman. Paired blade and axe, once a possession of his mother's before... The lad banished hesitation from his step and forged in.
Almost immediately he came upon a trio of settled bodies leaned against the cave wall. By their posture, reclining poses, someone had taken the effort to delicately marionette the corpses into warning displays. A Columi... A Vanr... And a Nautolan. Seroth's brow wrinkled. Three disparate species that, under usual circumstance, would never be found native to Arda. The Levantine realms were, previously, left to their progressions in total obscurity. Only the selection of the Silent Conclave possessed the necessary navicomp coordinates to successfully perform the linking jumps. ...Or had. Gently, he tilted the bulbous, over-sized and gargantuan cranium of the Columi side to side. Tract marks from syringe injections bruised several depressed sub-epidermal veins. True for the Vanr, the Nautolan. Signs of prolonged constraint on the cut and healed scabs over their wrist-skin and naked ankles. Strips of missing flesh, gouged, needle-like rings depressed into their throats, general signs of chemical coercion in patches of dappled pallor.
They'd been left dead three days at least, perhaps a week at most. Seroth also promised to see to their needs when his hunt was concluded. Ardans held that leaving the dead out too long invited Calabed to stir: the ferocious hurricanes of Arda, supposedly the dire sorrow and wrath of the deceased lost to the waters. For the meanwhile, he came up to his knees and began carefully picking his way into the cave.
The interior was a lambent drip of faintly illuminated, water smoothed tunnels. It resembled a naturally occurring barrel vault, save the lack of machined bricking overhead. Keeping his tools readied, Seroth lightly stepped between shallow sediment puddles at his feet. Prior heat had caused his torso to break out in a heady sweat to cope. Now, with his tunic and trousers clinging to his skin, the coolness dropped the swampy glistens of salt-moisture to clamp down with frigidity. Seroth fought the shiver. His eyes were snapping from detail to detail: disturbed puddles showcasing flung mud, further pieces of gouged off cotton and shark-skin. The captured procession had been funneled in through the lengthy entrance bottle-neck, eventually widening where the tunnel expanded out. He found idling kits of portable machinery stashed in crude apses. In time, following the the burrow, it separated into three distinct underpasses.
To the left came bestial groans emitting from a warbling snout. Some sort of... set chambers for make-shift animal pens. On the right, laps of running water banking off granite stone echoing up a barely lit passage. And centrally, a singular vaulting pass lit only by clinging knots of naturally phosphorescent moss, fungi, hanging lichen creepers. Tempting as it was to venture directly, Seroth sidled into the rightmost passage. If he was fortunate, it could potentially provide a link-up to whatever primary chamber was in use to house the massed bodies of missing Segey natives. A hopefully unseen flank that would lever advantage into his court. Yet, something disconcerting nagged at his faculties. For as he snuck along, distantly, he could just interpret the shrill agonies of someone infernally screaming...
@[member="Valik"]
It flitted close to the laid's ear whispering cold benediction.
Seroth slung back his slug-gun. His hands reached, taking up Seydakin, Huntsman. Paired blade and axe, once a possession of his mother's before... The lad banished hesitation from his step and forged in.
Almost immediately he came upon a trio of settled bodies leaned against the cave wall. By their posture, reclining poses, someone had taken the effort to delicately marionette the corpses into warning displays. A Columi... A Vanr... And a Nautolan. Seroth's brow wrinkled. Three disparate species that, under usual circumstance, would never be found native to Arda. The Levantine realms were, previously, left to their progressions in total obscurity. Only the selection of the Silent Conclave possessed the necessary navicomp coordinates to successfully perform the linking jumps. ...Or had. Gently, he tilted the bulbous, over-sized and gargantuan cranium of the Columi side to side. Tract marks from syringe injections bruised several depressed sub-epidermal veins. True for the Vanr, the Nautolan. Signs of prolonged constraint on the cut and healed scabs over their wrist-skin and naked ankles. Strips of missing flesh, gouged, needle-like rings depressed into their throats, general signs of chemical coercion in patches of dappled pallor.
They'd been left dead three days at least, perhaps a week at most. Seroth also promised to see to their needs when his hunt was concluded. Ardans held that leaving the dead out too long invited Calabed to stir: the ferocious hurricanes of Arda, supposedly the dire sorrow and wrath of the deceased lost to the waters. For the meanwhile, he came up to his knees and began carefully picking his way into the cave.
The interior was a lambent drip of faintly illuminated, water smoothed tunnels. It resembled a naturally occurring barrel vault, save the lack of machined bricking overhead. Keeping his tools readied, Seroth lightly stepped between shallow sediment puddles at his feet. Prior heat had caused his torso to break out in a heady sweat to cope. Now, with his tunic and trousers clinging to his skin, the coolness dropped the swampy glistens of salt-moisture to clamp down with frigidity. Seroth fought the shiver. His eyes were snapping from detail to detail: disturbed puddles showcasing flung mud, further pieces of gouged off cotton and shark-skin. The captured procession had been funneled in through the lengthy entrance bottle-neck, eventually widening where the tunnel expanded out. He found idling kits of portable machinery stashed in crude apses. In time, following the the burrow, it separated into three distinct underpasses.
To the left came bestial groans emitting from a warbling snout. Some sort of... set chambers for make-shift animal pens. On the right, laps of running water banking off granite stone echoing up a barely lit passage. And centrally, a singular vaulting pass lit only by clinging knots of naturally phosphorescent moss, fungi, hanging lichen creepers. Tempting as it was to venture directly, Seroth sidled into the rightmost passage. If he was fortunate, it could potentially provide a link-up to whatever primary chamber was in use to house the massed bodies of missing Segey natives. A hopefully unseen flank that would lever advantage into his court. Yet, something disconcerting nagged at his faculties. For as he snuck along, distantly, he could just interpret the shrill agonies of someone infernally screaming...
@[member="Valik"]
Valik
Professor of Alchemy
If the young hero headed left he'd have found a Piscator, a massive Sith Spawn ready to break it's chains and feed on whatever was nearest. If he went dead center he'd find his path lit, but a squad of HRD's ready to ambush him in the open light. But traveling right he'd explore the midnight-black caverns, and find a trail of fresh water to follow. As he'd likely follow the trail he'd eventually come to find his path walled off, but in front of the walls would be a spring full of clean water, a good look would even show an aquatic tunnel beneath.
If he chose to examine the water he'd find it fresh, with no alterations herbal or chemical, save for some fish and algae deep below. It'd be safe to drink, even safe to swim, and a rugged explorer would find he could under the wall, and around his obstacle, coming to tunnel not unlike the one he'd taken here, save for the magnified screams and a faint light at the end of it giving him direction where to go.
_______________________________
With his mind quite literally reshaped, the mad scientist's subject was no longer sure who he was, or what he was. All he remembered was . . . the screams of the humans. Their frightened faces, save for one. The one. The one who captured all of them, the one who made into this . . . thing.
"We're halfway there you know." He heard the alchemist's cold, calculated voice, as if he'd lived this moment a thousand times in his memories, his dreams, his plans.
"But before we put on the finishing touches you'll need some protection." He said, before grabbing a couple chunks of metal. "Can't have you losing an arm or a leg can we?" The scientist mused before raising his back and putting some sort of jack inbetween it and the table.
"Thus I will grant you wings, that you might block your enemy's blade." He said, and put the two metal chunks on his shoulder blades. Metal and skin collided, fusing together as he could feel the insides of his bones hollowing, marrow traveling to his shoulders before coming out of his body, forming new appendages. Reptavian wings emerged as he screamed from the pain of having his body grow new bones, new limbs.
Whatever he was before he was no longer, where common man and common mind once laid on a cold steel examination table, only an abomination remained.
@[member="Seroth Ur-Rahn"]
If he chose to examine the water he'd find it fresh, with no alterations herbal or chemical, save for some fish and algae deep below. It'd be safe to drink, even safe to swim, and a rugged explorer would find he could under the wall, and around his obstacle, coming to tunnel not unlike the one he'd taken here, save for the magnified screams and a faint light at the end of it giving him direction where to go.
_______________________________
With his mind quite literally reshaped, the mad scientist's subject was no longer sure who he was, or what he was. All he remembered was . . . the screams of the humans. Their frightened faces, save for one. The one. The one who captured all of them, the one who made into this . . . thing.
"We're halfway there you know." He heard the alchemist's cold, calculated voice, as if he'd lived this moment a thousand times in his memories, his dreams, his plans.
"But before we put on the finishing touches you'll need some protection." He said, before grabbing a couple chunks of metal. "Can't have you losing an arm or a leg can we?" The scientist mused before raising his back and putting some sort of jack inbetween it and the table.
"Thus I will grant you wings, that you might block your enemy's blade." He said, and put the two metal chunks on his shoulder blades. Metal and skin collided, fusing together as he could feel the insides of his bones hollowing, marrow traveling to his shoulders before coming out of his body, forming new appendages. Reptavian wings emerged as he screamed from the pain of having his body grow new bones, new limbs.
Whatever he was before he was no longer, where common man and common mind once laid on a cold steel examination table, only an abomination remained.
@[member="Seroth Ur-Rahn"]
Seydon of Arda
Raquor'daan
In a slow gradation to blackness, the tunnel's ambient glow began darkening until the lad could scarcely make out the line of his hand before his eyes. Seroth paused, reaching into his kit-belt to snap a small lantern to a clip hot-glued onto his slug-gun barrel's heat shield. The lantern shone starkly in a long, narrow cone. It pitched everything into colours of stark chalk and silver-white, drawing out tremendous shadows. He ventured along, his attentions between listening, watching ahead for movement or signs of... whatever it was he felt he needed to be expecting. His other thoughts were struggling with details. How had someone from beyond the Levantines found this sanctuary world? What purpose drove them to callously gun their way through local fishers and families? The lad wasn't so naive to practices of war, mercenary work, but he didn't precisely subscribe to accepting them.
Step by step teased a gentle caress of dissonant light from further ahead. Seroth followed the curl of the tunnel, gliding down, ascending up, wondering at faint discolorations. It was like a dozen mirrors were placed about tallow-candles, and were redirecting their glows with shaky fidelity. He dimmed his lantern to let his vision accustom to the low glow-levels. Some sunken chips of granite had fallen from the ceiling to crash against the stone below. They were each long, jagged, wide as a man and a foot more. Crossing them by raised the hackles in the valves of his heart. Each jet-slab was like a leering shooter's cover. It was difficult not to imagine a score of breathless fiends waiting, cocking blaster-rifles. Waiting. Yet, Seroth found himself still want for company. No shadows leapt from the upraised slabs.
The tunnel emptied into a wide ante-chamber. Moisture had rounded the walls until it was almost cathedral-like in austere quality. Light bounced up from a wide drum of water. Crusted lime and mineral deposits lined the edges like a pie. Seroth bent to a haunch and loomed over the tiny breakers, peering down. The liquid was clearer than transparisteel glass. Despite the warp of light, he could measure it was an approximate six meter swim to the pan-dish below. From his belt he produced a small mercurial sliver, striking it off the lilting surface. Three seconds, the tab glowed green as from a rainbow. Taking a moment, Seroth laid aside his rifle and stuck the whole of his head into the liquid. Great drafts of water were sucked up in a long drink.
"Hhaaahh!"
Thick streams of droplets, rivulets, spilled down his soaked mane. His throat burned from the cold of the long draught. Perhaps more importantly, he spied a natural aquatic tunnel running forward beneath the far chamber stone walling. Seroth checked to his kit, powering down the battery of his slung vibrosword, fitting his pistols and shotgun barrels plastic overlays. It took deliberation to brace his body for oncoming cold. His lungs swelled tight with air, nose clenching shut, whilst he swung his legs over the pond lip and hopped. Suddenly he was in a vault of blue-light and scouring cold. At once Seroth felt like his mortality was being tested. The way the chill slowly viced pressure around his throat was exhilarating. Then, with great muscles bunching around his shoulders and back, he began kicking and stroking his way forward.
Pearls of air escaped from the sides of his mouth from moment to moment. The tunnel below was blessedly short, an approximate thirty second odyssey below smoothed basalt, granite, and lustrous crystal. He came up onto the other side of secondary, more grandiose cavern. Swimming, his fingers gripped to the mineral-lime growths. In a singular, smooth push, he lifted the whole of his torso to catch a toe to the floor. Another press stood him up tall, gushed with liquid hanging off his clinging sleeves and pant-legs. Off snapped the barrel caps with the lad resuming vigilance. Even through the brief clog in his ears, the hollering cascades of unearthly, hellish cries were ringing louder now. Something... thick permeated the air. Sweet in its coyness, coated with grave-rot, like the breath of the dead wheezing up from a sepulcher.
Seroth began to sprint on now, holding the slug-gun to his hip. Human whimpers edged the cadence-roars of the daemonic, chthonian howls. The sourness in the air was beginning to grow in triple magnitude. Shadows began to shiver at the edge of his vision. Clawed hands, whisking profiles, accompanied by occasional whispers. ...How the whispers knew his name, Seroth wasn't keen to discover.
@[member="Valik"]
Step by step teased a gentle caress of dissonant light from further ahead. Seroth followed the curl of the tunnel, gliding down, ascending up, wondering at faint discolorations. It was like a dozen mirrors were placed about tallow-candles, and were redirecting their glows with shaky fidelity. He dimmed his lantern to let his vision accustom to the low glow-levels. Some sunken chips of granite had fallen from the ceiling to crash against the stone below. They were each long, jagged, wide as a man and a foot more. Crossing them by raised the hackles in the valves of his heart. Each jet-slab was like a leering shooter's cover. It was difficult not to imagine a score of breathless fiends waiting, cocking blaster-rifles. Waiting. Yet, Seroth found himself still want for company. No shadows leapt from the upraised slabs.
The tunnel emptied into a wide ante-chamber. Moisture had rounded the walls until it was almost cathedral-like in austere quality. Light bounced up from a wide drum of water. Crusted lime and mineral deposits lined the edges like a pie. Seroth bent to a haunch and loomed over the tiny breakers, peering down. The liquid was clearer than transparisteel glass. Despite the warp of light, he could measure it was an approximate six meter swim to the pan-dish below. From his belt he produced a small mercurial sliver, striking it off the lilting surface. Three seconds, the tab glowed green as from a rainbow. Taking a moment, Seroth laid aside his rifle and stuck the whole of his head into the liquid. Great drafts of water were sucked up in a long drink.
"Hhaaahh!"
Thick streams of droplets, rivulets, spilled down his soaked mane. His throat burned from the cold of the long draught. Perhaps more importantly, he spied a natural aquatic tunnel running forward beneath the far chamber stone walling. Seroth checked to his kit, powering down the battery of his slung vibrosword, fitting his pistols and shotgun barrels plastic overlays. It took deliberation to brace his body for oncoming cold. His lungs swelled tight with air, nose clenching shut, whilst he swung his legs over the pond lip and hopped. Suddenly he was in a vault of blue-light and scouring cold. At once Seroth felt like his mortality was being tested. The way the chill slowly viced pressure around his throat was exhilarating. Then, with great muscles bunching around his shoulders and back, he began kicking and stroking his way forward.
Pearls of air escaped from the sides of his mouth from moment to moment. The tunnel below was blessedly short, an approximate thirty second odyssey below smoothed basalt, granite, and lustrous crystal. He came up onto the other side of secondary, more grandiose cavern. Swimming, his fingers gripped to the mineral-lime growths. In a singular, smooth push, he lifted the whole of his torso to catch a toe to the floor. Another press stood him up tall, gushed with liquid hanging off his clinging sleeves and pant-legs. Off snapped the barrel caps with the lad resuming vigilance. Even through the brief clog in his ears, the hollering cascades of unearthly, hellish cries were ringing louder now. Something... thick permeated the air. Sweet in its coyness, coated with grave-rot, like the breath of the dead wheezing up from a sepulcher.
Seroth began to sprint on now, holding the slug-gun to his hip. Human whimpers edged the cadence-roars of the daemonic, chthonian howls. The sourness in the air was beginning to grow in triple magnitude. Shadows began to shiver at the edge of his vision. Clawed hands, whisking profiles, accompanied by occasional whispers. ...How the whispers knew his name, Seroth wasn't keen to discover.
@[member="Valik"]
Valik
Professor of Alchemy
While our Young Hero continued down his tunnel in search of the missing Ardans, Warren Valik was putting on the final touch, the last and most important piece of the puzzle. The amalgamation of four different sentients lay before him on a table, each of the biological components fitting into place. The creature's mind shattered, a mental defense brought about by the trauma and the pain of the process, along with his new body left him a new man, a new Sith to terrorize the galaxy.
"You will be something special." He said, as he placed his hands on the sithspawn's chest, concentrating deeply to imbue the powers of the Piscator onto his subject. "Many Sith find their fuel to be their emotions, their rage, their hatred. Some evolve to drain their power from the life of others, even binding spirits to their body to increase their power." He said, as something began to change within the former quarren. Something not biological, but an imprint in the Force, a power unlike any he'd seen before.
"But you, you shall learn to feast on the fear of others. These primitives shall be your first meal, but not your last. Soon you will terrorize your foes, and use that terror to ravage worlds." He said, as the sithspawn's power began to grow, he could feel it, in the force, in his muscles, his bones.
"Now, arise, my Nyarl." He said, right about at the time our Young Hero would arrive to find the cage filled laboratory, with hundreds of women and children packed into a mere room.
"You will be something special." He said, as he placed his hands on the sithspawn's chest, concentrating deeply to imbue the powers of the Piscator onto his subject. "Many Sith find their fuel to be their emotions, their rage, their hatred. Some evolve to drain their power from the life of others, even binding spirits to their body to increase their power." He said, as something began to change within the former quarren. Something not biological, but an imprint in the Force, a power unlike any he'd seen before.
"But you, you shall learn to feast on the fear of others. These primitives shall be your first meal, but not your last. Soon you will terrorize your foes, and use that terror to ravage worlds." He said, as the sithspawn's power began to grow, he could feel it, in the force, in his muscles, his bones.
"Now, arise, my Nyarl." He said, right about at the time our Young Hero would arrive to find the cage filled laboratory, with hundreds of women and children packed into a mere room.
Nyarl
Cthulhu
Like a long forgotten diety, Nyarl's power grew beyond anything he had ever comprehended. Fueled by the fear of hundreds of superstitions Ardans he ripped through his durasteel shackles as if the were tissue paper by his side."Ph'nglui mglw'nafh" Nyarl spoke, his words distorted by the mass of tentacles in front of him. The scientist looked at him curiously before he gestured to the Axeman of Arda, to which Valik almost snorted.
"Kill him." The alchemist ordered, and Nyarl ripped the durasteel examination table out from the ground and marched toward him, doubling the large metal plate as his shield, and his club.
OOC: Continuing RPing with yet to be approved species with the permission of @[member="Seroth Ur-Rahn"]
Seydon of Arda
Raquor'daan
...It dominated his senses. Its presence demanded nothing less. Seroth paused his step into a jarring stop, at the lip of a long corridor fenced with machinery, generators, medical vaults. Amidst the haphazard storage rested scores of compacted wrought-durasteel pen-cages. Each brimmed with milling bodies too tightly squeezed. Flailing arms trying to grasp at nothing past the barring. Some hundred and more Ardans crying aloud in a sick chorus, bleaching the walls with penultimate fear. For many thought they knew something of demons and now, faced with what this amalgamated nightmare, came to know differently.
Seroth thought he knew devils too. But this one stood like a risen scion from an age where gods were true and physical. It was head and a half taller, standing on supine legs, nautiloid, winged, tentacled. Somehow its outline retained an inky shiver. Like the shade cast by the shadows of a dead star. The lad thumbed the safety on for his slug-gun, tossing it back over his shoulder. A misfire, one stray shot, could wing a score of trapped Ardans if he missed.
So he drew Sedyakin in his offhand, the long vibrosword into his right. The lad took up a horned guard. It was the beast's fantastic reach with both its lanky fore-limbs and the bulked operating table it wielded like a toothpick. Its legs allowed for a powerful step across most distances, crossing the optimal space between the far corridor end and the immediate meters before the lad's range of slash. There'd be no way, not with his current physicality, to arrest it pound for pound in a contest of strength. So Seroth feinted. The tip of his blade jerked up, wove a figure eight before the beastie's eyes. As Seroth drew it back, his sheathe-knife flashed forward, pointed to skewer and savage the meat and skin of its left wrist.
@[member="Nyarl"]
Seroth thought he knew devils too. But this one stood like a risen scion from an age where gods were true and physical. It was head and a half taller, standing on supine legs, nautiloid, winged, tentacled. Somehow its outline retained an inky shiver. Like the shade cast by the shadows of a dead star. The lad thumbed the safety on for his slug-gun, tossing it back over his shoulder. A misfire, one stray shot, could wing a score of trapped Ardans if he missed.
So he drew Sedyakin in his offhand, the long vibrosword into his right. The lad took up a horned guard. It was the beast's fantastic reach with both its lanky fore-limbs and the bulked operating table it wielded like a toothpick. Its legs allowed for a powerful step across most distances, crossing the optimal space between the far corridor end and the immediate meters before the lad's range of slash. There'd be no way, not with his current physicality, to arrest it pound for pound in a contest of strength. So Seroth feinted. The tip of his blade jerked up, wove a figure eight before the beastie's eyes. As Seroth drew it back, his sheathe-knife flashed forward, pointed to skewer and savage the meat and skin of its left wrist.
@[member="Nyarl"]
Nyarl
Cthulhu
Fight Music
Nyarl was a very powerful sithspawn due to the mass of terrified Ardan's around him, able to wield the large cadaver sized table as if it were, to quote a young hero, 'a toothpick'. However, as Nyarl's previous mind, along with whatever name and experience he held were effectively destroyed due to the sheer traumatic shock of Valik's constant experimentation he was, almost literally, 'born yesterday'. As such he bit hard for the young adventurer's feint, trying to block it with the table before Seroth's sheath-knife dug into his left wrist, causing an almost inkish black blood to secrete from his body.
With a grunt he attempted to slam the man with a simple yet speedy push onto his table, the force exerted akin to a bench-press. From there he brought the table up, in a moment of exposure, before slamming it down on what he hoped was the young hero's skull. He couldn't manage precise movements due to his wrist injury, but right now all Nyarl exerted was pure brute Force.
@[member="Seroth Ur-Rahn"]
Nyarl was a very powerful sithspawn due to the mass of terrified Ardan's around him, able to wield the large cadaver sized table as if it were, to quote a young hero, 'a toothpick'. However, as Nyarl's previous mind, along with whatever name and experience he held were effectively destroyed due to the sheer traumatic shock of Valik's constant experimentation he was, almost literally, 'born yesterday'. As such he bit hard for the young adventurer's feint, trying to block it with the table before Seroth's sheath-knife dug into his left wrist, causing an almost inkish black blood to secrete from his body.
With a grunt he attempted to slam the man with a simple yet speedy push onto his table, the force exerted akin to a bench-press. From there he brought the table up, in a moment of exposure, before slamming it down on what he hoped was the young hero's skull. He couldn't manage precise movements due to his wrist injury, but right now all Nyarl exerted was pure brute Force.
@[member="Seroth Ur-Rahn"]
Seydon of Arda
Raquor'daan
The length of blood-dirtied table filled the whole of the lad's vision. Seroth spat out his breath and raised his forearms up across his ribs in an X guard. The crunch of impact was still terrific. Still more than able enough to drive pain up through the marrow of his sternum. Nyarl sent the lad flailing for a half meter, his shoulders smacking to the uneven stone-bed beneath. The beast was swiftly arresting its momentum and drawing back its implement. Light cascaded off the shorn metallic edges, before whisking down. It would pulp his skull and brain matter to liquid bone and spewing vitae, surely, if he couldn't sweep the blow aside.
Seroth didn't bother a parry from his prone lay. He slapped his elbows down, drawing up his knees, reversing into a backward somersault. His ears rang from the tumult of durasteel connecting to granite. It rang vibration up his ankles and knees, as the lad rose to a fast kneel. They were both now upon equal leveling... Hellacious, aquatic eyes burnished mind-crushing fires in a beating stare to Seroth's face. His slate-gaze didn't blink. Instead he jammed down his heel to keep the table stuck to the floor and lashed out. Both knife and blade whisked, the sword-point ramming up to take the fiend through its tentacle maw, the parrying-dagger cutting in a hard crescent to steal its right hand.
@[member="Nyarl"]
Seroth didn't bother a parry from his prone lay. He slapped his elbows down, drawing up his knees, reversing into a backward somersault. His ears rang from the tumult of durasteel connecting to granite. It rang vibration up his ankles and knees, as the lad rose to a fast kneel. They were both now upon equal leveling... Hellacious, aquatic eyes burnished mind-crushing fires in a beating stare to Seroth's face. His slate-gaze didn't blink. Instead he jammed down his heel to keep the table stuck to the floor and lashed out. Both knife and blade whisked, the sword-point ramming up to take the fiend through its tentacle maw, the parrying-dagger cutting in a hard crescent to steal its right hand.
@[member="Nyarl"]
Nyarl
Cthulhu
As Seroth jumped on top of Nyarl's makeshift weapon he found his tentacly fingers smashed to the ground, causing no small bit of pain. In retaliation he tried to merely raise the table with the man on top of it, slamming the young hero behind him, but felt his muscles not strong enough to pull off such an action. The herculean strength he commanded mere seconds ago was fading, as is he were losing power . . . the mad doctor had said that his strength was gained from the fears of his foes. If this axemen meant something to these captives, perhaps they thought he'd win. Perhaps some of them were losing their fear. Perhaps his power was drifting because of this man.
INTOLERABLE His mind screamed. Nyarl was a Sithspawn, power was the reason for his creation, his being, it was his drug. This man would not take it away from him, he needed to die. Bringing the table upwards with the axeman atop it he slowly redirected the stab going upwards into his face, into going downwards into the tentacle-beardy mass that lay under and over his chin. In response to the pain he dropped the table, inadvertently saving himself from losing a hand but leaving a deep incision into his palm. With a seeping cut in his right hand and a mangled left wrist he'd no longer to able to effectively wield the table, herculean strength or no. Presence in the force non-withstanding, the axemen held the advantage now by merely being better armed. He needed some way to even the odds . . .
With inkish black-blood draining from his right palm Nyarl thought quick, and swiftly swept his hands together, throwing the black substance at the man's face, hopefully his eyes, before trying to shove his left elbow into the lad's right elbow, in an effort to stop him from using his deadlier arm, while with his right arm he threw a haymaker into the young hero's gut.
@[member="Seroth Ur-Rahn"]
INTOLERABLE His mind screamed. Nyarl was a Sithspawn, power was the reason for his creation, his being, it was his drug. This man would not take it away from him, he needed to die. Bringing the table upwards with the axeman atop it he slowly redirected the stab going upwards into his face, into going downwards into the tentacle-beardy mass that lay under and over his chin. In response to the pain he dropped the table, inadvertently saving himself from losing a hand but leaving a deep incision into his palm. With a seeping cut in his right hand and a mangled left wrist he'd no longer to able to effectively wield the table, herculean strength or no. Presence in the force non-withstanding, the axemen held the advantage now by merely being better armed. He needed some way to even the odds . . .
With inkish black-blood draining from his right palm Nyarl thought quick, and swiftly swept his hands together, throwing the black substance at the man's face, hopefully his eyes, before trying to shove his left elbow into the lad's right elbow, in an effort to stop him from using his deadlier arm, while with his right arm he threw a haymaker into the young hero's gut.
@[member="Seroth Ur-Rahn"]
Seydon of Arda
Raquor'daan
He saw the pool of squid-black ink collect in the fiend's hands. Lancing up a forearm to foil the splash from taking his eyes meant temporarily losing a second edge to cut into the Darkspawn's hide, but to grit his eyes shut and risk whatever properties inherent to the substance creeping into his tear ducts... Such close-quarters required either combatant to pick and choose what they were necessitated to give and take. Seroth snapped up his arm, foiled the wash of ink from stealing his vision. But it opened up his side, exposed his ribs and hip. The lad never came dressed with underweave or plate. It felt slowing, too constricting for the full range of motion he stretched every morn to possess.
Seroth attempted backstepping anyhow. The beast had a serrated elbow-plate, ripping across his pectoral, gouting a hot ribbon of blood onto his scaly carapace. His feet were still not again swift enough. The haymaker caught into his gut and propelled him in a fierce slam to the stone below. Air burst from his lip, diaphragm savaged. Stars swung by in comet paths across his vision as he fought the shrieks of welling pain. He hadn't crucitorn. No abilities to soak damage in the fashions popular for more legendary fighters. Seroth knew he was bleeding from the back of his skull. His nape was warm from something dribbling down an itch of torn scalp.
No, he hadn't crucitorn or a host of powers. But he had his own defiance. Though stuck to the floor, the beast looming over, he recalled that he was now gifted a wide cone of safe fire~ Seroth swept his hands back and racked his slug-gun forward off his backside. Teeth grit, he slammed the woodstock to his shoulder, sighted with the bayonet pointed for the creature's midriff, and squeezed hard upon the trigger.
@[member="Nyarl"]
Seroth attempted backstepping anyhow. The beast had a serrated elbow-plate, ripping across his pectoral, gouting a hot ribbon of blood onto his scaly carapace. His feet were still not again swift enough. The haymaker caught into his gut and propelled him in a fierce slam to the stone below. Air burst from his lip, diaphragm savaged. Stars swung by in comet paths across his vision as he fought the shrieks of welling pain. He hadn't crucitorn. No abilities to soak damage in the fashions popular for more legendary fighters. Seroth knew he was bleeding from the back of his skull. His nape was warm from something dribbling down an itch of torn scalp.
No, he hadn't crucitorn or a host of powers. But he had his own defiance. Though stuck to the floor, the beast looming over, he recalled that he was now gifted a wide cone of safe fire~ Seroth swept his hands back and racked his slug-gun forward off his backside. Teeth grit, he slammed the woodstock to his shoulder, sighted with the bayonet pointed for the creature's midriff, and squeezed hard upon the trigger.
@[member="Nyarl"]
Nyarl
Cthulhu
He'd drawn blood from the man's elbows and knocked him back from the punch to his gut. As the young lad's head hit the floor he could feel power retuning to him, like a drug he'd only just reconnected with. Appreciation turned to shock however as the man pulled out a gun, then fired the trigger. Remembering his metal infused wings he folded them over himself like a great encompassing shield. The shot pierced into and even through his large wings at many intervals, some even piercing through and reaching his chest. Though he didn't know the exact metal woven into his wings it was Cortosis, a highly energy resistent metal, but barely protective against simple slugthrowers, vibroblades and axes.
Unflapping his wings out he panted heavily, bleeding profusely in many different areas. He marched forward to give the hero a good what-for, but on the way found himself on a knee, then another. He could feel his strength fading as the Ardan's were no longer terrified of him, the bloodied and nearly beaten monster. He attempted a swing forward, but was still too far away to injure the hero before Nyarl fell face-first onto the ground.
Unflapping his wings out he panted heavily, bleeding profusely in many different areas. He marched forward to give the hero a good what-for, but on the way found himself on a knee, then another. He could feel his strength fading as the Ardan's were no longer terrified of him, the bloodied and nearly beaten monster. He attempted a swing forward, but was still too far away to injure the hero before Nyarl fell face-first onto the ground.
Valik
Professor of Alchemy
Valik lightly put his hands together in a clap. "Most impressive young axemen." He complimented. "But I'm afraid your little game will have to end here." He said as he pulled down a sleeve, revealing a small aerosol launcher wrapped around his wrist and pulled a rebreather out of his pocket.
"This is Sith Poison. It brings a man to rage, to hatred, to the darkside, and eventually death. It can be cured, in the first eight hours or so, if you have one the galaxy's best healers on hand, but I'd wager you don't, and I'd wager even if you did you couldn't heal all of the . . . three hundred or so people here?" He continued, gesturing to the caged Ardans all around them.
"So here's what's going to happen. You're going to free your pathetic primitives and I'm going to walk out with my specimen unharmed." He said, before hitting the young hero with a piercing glance.
"Deal?"
@[member="Seroth Ur-Rahn"]
"This is Sith Poison. It brings a man to rage, to hatred, to the darkside, and eventually death. It can be cured, in the first eight hours or so, if you have one the galaxy's best healers on hand, but I'd wager you don't, and I'd wager even if you did you couldn't heal all of the . . . three hundred or so people here?" He continued, gesturing to the caged Ardans all around them.
"So here's what's going to happen. You're going to free your pathetic primitives and I'm going to walk out with my specimen unharmed." He said, before hitting the young hero with a piercing glance.
"Deal?"
@[member="Seroth Ur-Rahn"]
Seydon of Arda
Raquor'daan
Seroth rose, gripped the barrel pump and audibly racked a fresh shell into the priming chamber, snapping up the barrel to aim. Suddenly, one-sided negotiation became a teetering stand-off.
Both men flashed murder in their trading stares. The hazel-eyed one, loathe to suffer interference. The lad, teeth grit in a simmering glare. Three hundred traumatized souls for the price of this singular daemon? That was how he waged the worth of locals content to simply fish and laugh? Peripherally, massed faces were stroked wet with tears. They tried not to whimper but broke the quiet with harsh croaks. There was no triumph for the Ardans to enjoy. Going home meant finding their dead and putting them out to tide for burial. Tonight, each would sleep amidst ash, nostrils stung by caked sand-glass. Their nightmares...
He could perforate him, Seroth considered. Punch a trio of well-aimed holes through the bone of his ribs, tear out his diaphragm and spinal cord in one shot. Yet, his hands were stilled, calmly idling over the trigger of his wrist-gun. Even just a twitch...
The lad bit his cheek before thumbing a gloved finger over the slug-gun's safety catch. Seroth shouldered it, turned away to contend with the two score cage locks requiring manipulation. Data-spikes were fished from his harness pouches, then jammed into the digital-lock receptacles.
The lad turned his face aside, speaking. "This is your respite. Take your daemon-thing, and never come back. Because when I spy you again, there will be no force in creation to shield you from the damnation I will rain on you. ...Now get out."
@[member="Valik"]
Both men flashed murder in their trading stares. The hazel-eyed one, loathe to suffer interference. The lad, teeth grit in a simmering glare. Three hundred traumatized souls for the price of this singular daemon? That was how he waged the worth of locals content to simply fish and laugh? Peripherally, massed faces were stroked wet with tears. They tried not to whimper but broke the quiet with harsh croaks. There was no triumph for the Ardans to enjoy. Going home meant finding their dead and putting them out to tide for burial. Tonight, each would sleep amidst ash, nostrils stung by caked sand-glass. Their nightmares...
He could perforate him, Seroth considered. Punch a trio of well-aimed holes through the bone of his ribs, tear out his diaphragm and spinal cord in one shot. Yet, his hands were stilled, calmly idling over the trigger of his wrist-gun. Even just a twitch...
The lad bit his cheek before thumbing a gloved finger over the slug-gun's safety catch. Seroth shouldered it, turned away to contend with the two score cage locks requiring manipulation. Data-spikes were fished from his harness pouches, then jammed into the digital-lock receptacles.
The lad turned his face aside, speaking. "This is your respite. Take your daemon-thing, and never come back. Because when I spy you again, there will be no force in creation to shield you from the damnation I will rain on you. ...Now get out."
@[member="Valik"]