Gideon

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I try to find an action that I can do in the area, that might draw people's attention to me, that gives you lots of occasional IC comments you can make to make it clear you're there to RP and not standing around afk.


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and Minako likes attention. Mmm, yes.

yeah

First, another real weapon (and hell, not a sword):

Gáe Bulg

The spear of Cúchulainn. Branches out into multiple barbs inside the targets body after penetration. Tends to be nastily fatal. (there's more, but typing out all those accents is a pain )

"Really, a couple of things." Mary looks around at the others. "Firstly, I know we're wound up. We're angry about one of our own being taken. If we are to get out of this with her and our selves intact though, then we have to stick to what we need. No excesses of vengeance, no bloodbaths, no disintegrations. Once we know where she is, we go in, we get her and we move on. As much damage as is required to get the job done cleanly and quietly. That includes our ancilliary targets too. Righteous indignation will just get us into deeper trouble and cause questions we don't want to be raised. You all have what it takes in you to be that professional. Time to step up."

She looks around, to check everyone's at least paid attention. "Which leads onto the other thing. The plan we've got, itself, is sound. What I don't want to see is anyone running off half-cocked. You get word, pass it on. You find her, you call the rest in. In this place, at this time, individual heroics will be more trouble than they are worth. Doesn't matter if you think you can handle it. Get support." Mary is quite pointedly not looking at Richard at this point.

"Bottom line, if we keep our heads, don't start running wild, and keep this thing by the numbers, it'll come off as smooth as silk. Nobody gets left behind. Nobody is being the scapegoat today. We're quite capable of doing this without that kind of sacrifice."

Mary just had a barely disguised grin on her face throughout the entire telling-off, which soon drops into her more serious face, as she studies the maps, projections, and reports available, committing everything to memory. In a strange way, she's also watching all of the others too. Appraising... assessing almost.

Damia stretches, then gets to her feet, heading into the back to grab the long case, which proves, amongst other things, to contain some nondescript leathers. When she's changed, a touch of a slightly sparkly stick is all it takes to darken her aquamarine hair to a black with slight dark green overtones. "What our dear AI failed to mention is I've also had more experience than I probably should admit to with deniable black ops, so I can do the wise old Sergeant schtick."

Having just taken the furthest to left of the row that Cindersnap was bopping along in, Arachidamia, was, by comparison, almost a model of calm. A long case she carried with her had been stowed behind, and now she just sat, waiting. At moments, it almost looked like she could have fallen asleep, but anyone who'd known her for any length of time would have known this as a false calm, a professional focus and poise that only came with training and experience. Still, the fact she was holding onto her last coffee like a talisman would have raised suspicions of nervousness anyway.

Tuesday to Wednesday
Here and there, starting from Nene's cafe in the park, but spreading to other parts of the city, there transpired a curious event. Occasionally singly, occasionally in groups, miniature little robots, barely sensors, logic and motivation, appear, scan, and disappear. Their movements are so seemingly random that nobody really catches onto the fact that they have a purpose. Taking information, scanning, sifting, sorting and reporting. Unremarkable, until...

Thursday Night, 9:37pm

Burning Bolivar, currently doorguard for a small bunch of hellions who liked to call themselves the Brimstone Cadre, sat smoking stolen cigars, entertaining himself on his evenings guard duty by throwing rocks at bits of rubbish, city rats, anything unlucky enough to wander by. He was just bored enough to consider going back inside and grabbing another six-pack. It was all very well trying to make your own entertainment, like that fun little graffiti run against the cafe earlier in the week, but even the buzz from that had worn off after a few days. Turning to head inside, he staggered forward as something large and metal dropped out of thin air behind him, landing and unfolding itself, all metal arms, red optics, and laser weapons. Clangs and crashes, one louder than the rest as several heavy objects dropped through the roof of their safe-house, resounded from in front of him, as he felt the heavy grip of a metal claw on his shoulder, and then blacked out as he was introduced to the door frame, in close personal fashion.

Inside, there was a battle, of sorts. Of sorts, because it was pretty one-sided. A circle of heavy battle-mechs was hemming in the Cadre, who were desperatly throwing flames, bullets, knives and pointed sticks against the invaders. To no avail, all of them seemed protected by force-fields, which deflected the worst of the punishment, and the few things that did get through bothered these mechanical behemoths about as much as a summer breeze. The circle split, and a woman stepped into the space. Armoured, wearing a long coat and piratical hat, with a glowing-red monacle, and much in the way of chrome, she grinned at them, and gestured with the pulse-weapon she carried like a toy. The circle of robots stepped in, the crunching of metal feet on floor loud in the small space, as the robots reached grasping metal hands for their targets, hands that could rend steel...

10:17pm

The PPD had seen some very odd things in their time. When you saw heroes, magicians and weirdos on a regular basis, nothing was suprising anymore. But even this took some beating. An entire gang of hellions, quaking, stripped down to underpants and boots, showing off all manner of dubious tattoos. Each and every one of them had three broken fingers on his right hand, aside from Burning Bolivar, who had the identical damage on his left hand. Every one of them had had their heads shaved. Every one of them had had "kittycat" tattooed on his forehead. And every single one of them appears to have been lashed by steel cables to a railing, and resoundingly spanked. A note pined to the back of the leaders underskeds pronounced "footage available on youtube." To top all this off, a calling-card had been left. Each man had a toetag, labelled "Specimen: Anti-robot bigot. Interest Rating: 2/10. Property of Ironside Privateers Inc."

It probably didn't help the beaten egos of the formerly feared Brimstone Cadre that it took the police ten minutes more than it should to arrest them, simply from laughing too hard.

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Just renamed 'Fenris Greyback' to 'Jack Wulfe'...

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And opening a book on how long it is before that gets Generic'd.

((The Old Guard Returns))

It All Ends in Fire

Her dreams usually end in fire.

When you've seen and done as much as Mary, known to the hero world as Arachidamia, has, then you tend to collect a whole bunch of unpleasant memories and images. Even the most solid and unshakeable warrior while awake can see something quite different when asleep, and Mary is really no exception. Years (more than she cares to admit) spent fighting demons, and other creatures of the abyss have left her with some quite spotty things to dream about.

Some nights, all she remembers is that one event, the smell of brimstone, hot steel, burned flesh, and destruction, the battle against that one demon, a major player as far as the rankings of the abyss went. A fight that had raged across hours, across miles of mountainside in that far, high place. How she'd faced down horror, and still stood, with sword in hand, magic in soul, and strength in heart. That had been possibly the most epic fight of her life, the trade of blow and counter-blow, searing hellfire turning everything around her to ashes, laughter, and the knowledge of darkness within the light, and then, when she was at her most ragged, where the whole matter was in the finest of balance, there was the sudden shift, and her opponent vaporised.

Her saviour is always more beautiful than she remembers from life, the brightest of lights, all power and and charm, and still the fire. The bright burning of flame at dawn, the void of the soul masked by his burning countenance. She remembers his greeting, his words. How he was impressed with her beauty, her power, her strength. Even his force of personality was a deeply-engrained memory. Some part of her will always wonder whether she would even have considered what he had to say if she hadn't just been run to the edge of exhaustion, or whether she was always just more attracted to the danger, to the fire. However, listen, she did. The memory of those few moments is like an eternity in dreams. the offer, to make her a power in the world, to stand with him, whatever form he chose to wear (and here, the seductive array of images, male and female, that he could wear, were always trotted out for temptation's sake.) In effect, a proposal of marriage, marriage to one of the top echelons of the infernal. eternity, power, pleasure and all that came with it.

It still scares her to think she even remotely thought about it.

Those dreams often end the same way, with her giving her answer with her defiance, and with her blade. The snarl, the twisting of that beauty into bestial power, and he fled, wounded by her last-gasp defiance, by the calling up of every last vestige of what made her her, of the truth that Arachidamia, warrior hero, magician and hunter of all that was dark, kept within her. Bright steel versus burning flame and the dark abyss. That's all she always believed herself to be. That ending is one of his vengeance, burning flarelight... and Fire. Always Fire.

...

But sometimes. there's a different end. The sulphurous reek is replaced by camphor, spices, the hot winds of the summer evening. Everything that was painful and dangerous is replaced by that comfort. The impression of warm arms, shielding her from the worst that her nightmares, that her subconcious can throw. Fire, so often the instrument of those she faces, becomes the instrument of that which comforts. The deep down knowledge that somewhere, to some, she is not just another soldier, that she has worth beyond her skill, that even this battered veteran of the darkest of places has not become lost, that looking into the abyss has not allowed her to become that abyss, that she is still human, with everything that comes with it. That fire is quite different, welcoming, beckoning in a way that the most seductive of demons never could be. Still the flames, but of a sort not usually associated with battle. Those are the good dreams.

Still. Good or bad, one way or the other, all those dreams end in fire.

Authors Note: Dreamscape is a semi-disconnected series of mini-fic, based on the internal works of several of my characters. Expect Infrequent Updates

Yes, Yes They Do

Sylpheed didn't dream in the usual sense. Not that she actually needed sleep either, but sometimes it was useful to go into standby, and let her AI go into free-association mode. It appeared to need the release.. and certainly seemed to have an unusual sense of humour.

Yes, humour, that must have been it. When she was fully conscious, she couldn't provide any other explanation for the images of her standing on a rooftop, counting the passing of several fully-armed and operational, lightning-spewing, and most definitely woolly and baa-ing cyborgs...

Are the previously-discussed characters unoriginal? Not touching that one with a ten foot bargepole.

Was the response overboard? Probably, yes. I'll admit it was somewhat funny at the time, but on the whole, it is inappropriate for what we're trying to do here.

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hell no :P
cable as in NTL/telewest (London right? that'd be ntl)
cable tv, phone line and broadband about £30, all down your cable line, so no need for a BT landline

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It's all run by Virgins now.

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Fixed that for you.

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God is already real, and has chosen, for his own reasons, to want people to show faith. The same with Allah, Budha, etc. hey are already real,

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Prove it. No, really.

Oh, you mean in game. Well, in-game, nothing has been said about the religious affiliations of the country.

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And by-the-way.. I am one of those that uses a real historic character as a city of villains toon for roleplay.. and I noticed that having that has helped me in my roleplay. I have dates, places, family ... everything handed to me. Just needed to build on what I had using history.

If you read Liz her full bio you see she is interweaved into history after that.. she was a friend of Marie Antonette in Versailles, responsable for Jack the Ripper in Londen, and for the vampiric encounters in Rhode Island... letting her end up in Paragon City and eventually in the rogue Isles.

If that is wrong... attack every story that uses her, every Dracula movie you ever saw, attack the movie Braveheart, Highlander, Cleopatra, Rome, Prophecy, Indiana Jones, and millions of others.

psstt.. I also own (or made for a friend)... Pocahontas, Count Di Cagliostro, Vlad Tepesh Dracul and Marie Laveau. Look them up on wikipedia...

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Edited due to sudden realisation that I may have been over-harsh.

Stripped of the hyperbole. You cannot say your Liz Bathory is a historical character and then pull in alsorts of spurious jockey-shorts about Marie Antoinette, Jack the Ripper etc. yes, the Countess was a real person. No she was not an immortal vampire. Nothing wrong with your version, it's just not a historical character.

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I'd recommend this guide (there are more US side, too):

Old, but still 'ard



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Not wishing to blow my own trumpet or anything, but this is a sliiightly (but still pre-Inventions) updated version.

I dunnow. I have the Fortune Family, who are a catchall for anything interesting and magical I might find. Beyond that (and the occasional obligatory evil-twin thing going on,) there's only been one real link, which is hat one of my characters instructed another in sword-play.

Oh, and Z, you can hang the Concord off the GoD, on account of Nene's association with Josie.

I have no idea.

You guys remember we used to have a wiki? Y'know, the one from before the current bastion of knowledge we have.

Well, I check it from time to time, and I'm fed up of re-editing assorted pages to remove the online pharmacy links, link-farm spam, and sorrted vandalism. So, whoever it was that actually owned it in the first place, if we're not actually using it any more, any chance of us saving out all the old info, and then shutting it down? as it is, it's just giving us a bad name.

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RP wise, im busy fixing up Lunk's stuff (licence, pregnancy, the hunt)

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Lunk's pregnant?

and in two different places:

Rogue Isles: The Digital Dog Tavern

Josie Ironside, that paragon of technological knowhow, cybernetic and robotic genius extraordinaire, is perusing a stack of the latest technical journals, including Off/Switch, which she usually just reads for the crossword.
"Not bad, if a little hung up on the meaning, rather than the ability."
With this cryptic comment, she throws the debate open to a group of the rogue isles more sociable hackers, computer techs, engineers, and general nutbars.


Elsewhere: The Green Room.
Sylpheed idly flicked through the latest issue off Off/switch magazine, no doubt gleefully provided by the research staff of "The Judge and Jury" to turn the participants thoughts to the issues the show probably most wanted to talk about. A good article, and if it helped dispose of this arrant nonsense about AI's and EMPS, then so much the better.

"Five minutes, Ms Sylpheed." The production staff were pretty punctual. She just hoped this was going to turn out right. But then, what was certain about life?

Yesterday, the world was infested by extreme amounts of stupid. I therefore have nothing to report.

Well, Sylpheed will.

I have a simple expedient answer for those who need something to put in the sexuality template box, when it just isn't that important or necessary to know.

Irrelevant.