With the escalation of hostilities between Etzos and Rhakros, a series of small walled towns is being established as a network of early warnings and defenses against Rhakros' reprisals. Only the very bravest and most formidable of characters should risk themselves on the Witches' Wilds frontier.
“I feel like we’ve had this conversation before, Stark.”
Robin shrugged his shoulders. He was determined not to look at her; the wind comforted him, singing praises and confidence in his ear. He breathed in its gentle support, his lungs filling with a borrowed strength.
“Let it go, alright?” He groaned, leaning against a wall, his eyes closed.
“Let it go? LET IT GO? I can’t hold this stream of inadequacies back anymore.” she all but shouted at him. She wanted to turn her back and slam the door in his face. “You have one job: shut up, lend credibility, bust heads. You have failed on every single count. We talk, you say you understand, you go on to do every fuckin’ single thing wrong again.”
“You realize you hired a zealot,” again, he ignored the reasoning behind their constant string of meetings. “I thought you were supposed to hire a bodyguard.” Robin was suddenly invested in his nails. The white edges were chewed and broken, speckled with flesh-colored stones like the rest of his skin.
“I was and I did,” Zipper said. “And this ‘zealot’, as troubled as his moustache was ugly--
“He had a moustache?”
“Your diversions are not cute. He’s kept up his end of the bargain - You? You have no- LOOK AT ME.” Her voice was a mother’s scream to an errant child. “Fuckin’ look at me when I talk to you.”
He breathed loudly through his nostrils. Robin rolled his eyes, his gaze landing on Zipper. “Better, dad?” The wind smiled with a quiet warmth. It swam through the air, trailing clean through the stale and liquor stains.
“What do you want? If this is some extended form of negotiation to barter something you want, you have made every point you needed to. C’mon, give it to me. Get it off your chest and out in the open.”
“I don’t want to work with you.” Not a lie, but not what he wanted. He didn’t know the answer so he made one up.
“And I don’t want to work with you,”she said bluntly. If his words stung, it didn’t show on the rage in her face. “You miserable, learning-challenged cum otter, but choice ain’t the flavor of the season.”
“Then why the fuck are we doing this. Can’t we just pretend we did and call it a day?”
Last edited by Robin Stark on Thu Nov 23, 2017 4:06 pm, edited 2 times in total. word count: 409
No, a child -a normal child that didn’t ask for a beating- at least had a basic conception of give and take. Robin was the other kind - pouting at chores not yet done, shoving in as much passive resistance as he could muster. Giving her lip service and then turning around and doing everything he could in his power to inconvenience her. Even Finn at least understood -for the most part- the boundaries he could not cross.
He was the most immature man -she used the term loosely- she had ever met.
“Stark, I promise you this: the moment we go back to Etzos, I will file a transfer for you with Torvyn.” She folded her arms, staring him straight in the face. “You will never see me again. I, praise the fuckin’ High Marshal himself, will never see you again. Until then, you will fall in line. You will do your fuckin’ job and you will go on this hunt with the Zealot.”
He crossed his arm, like he was did, because he was a fucking open book before a fucking crowd of sleep deprived students a week before term’s end. The wind tousled his hair, because he was a fucking child who needed a constant pacifier. It wasn’t lost of her her the warm air seemed to follow her, leaving her with the cold of the oncoming season.
She found it oddly comforting. She would never tell him, but she did.
“Tell me why, then. I’ve seen the poster of the mutant otter but what the fuck are you getting out of this, Zipper?” His mouth wormed its way into something almost smug. A thin slug of condescension that begged to be slapped off his face. “What was the point pretending not to be a mage? What is the point of saving this rotting city? It has, literally, five arcs before it collapses. A solid tremor would knock over the shit-sack we’re staying in,” he said, the ground shaking as he spoke.
She was beginning to learn how to ignore the little elemental tantrums that followed him around. Where once she thought they were an onset of attack, now she knew them for what they were: the unsubtle, involuntary emanations of a magic both inferior and unstable.
“Why do you care? Do your job, collect the wage, leave the rest to me. I am asking for the bare minimum, Stark. The bare fuckin’ minimum. A Guard in low Ne’hear and a Black Guard in Etzos are gulfs apart. We’re more than brutes with knives, and I’m asking for some adaptation here.”
Last edited by Zip on Thu Nov 23, 2017 3:13 pm, edited 1 time in total. word count: 446
Robin laughed, thinking of the wolf’s head he kept in his left pocket. “I wasn’t exactly the model guard back there, either. There isn’t much point in helping people who can’t help themselves,” Karem wouldn’t like that, he thought bitterly. Find a pack. Loneliness is the ultimate killer. Now he was stuck with Zipper and he sorely wished he was alone or dead.
“Completely unsurprising.” Zipper said. “So let me say this one last time: I don’t care if these simians drink themselves into an early grave. I don’t care if they die in the great war against some Rhakros plague siege or finally work themselves into a riot so huge the tower back home decides ‘hey, it ain’t worth it no more’. I will do my job to the best of my ability, I will give this place the tools it needs to survive and if they choose to squander it, fuck them.”
“Immortal’s fucking otter. You idiots are so desperate to fucking worship something you’re actually devoted to your job.” He collapsed into the ground dramatically, burying his face in between his arms and knees.
“Nice,” she said. “Nice fuckin’ going, you child.” He couldn't see her, but It was clear from her voice that she was resisting the urge to kick him. No doubt she was terrified of his magic. He wished she did. He wished for an excuse to lay waste to her at this very moment. “If you’re done with your charades, I’m going to say this one last time: Get with the program, do your job, talk like the rep means something you you. And get the fuck up. Are we clear?”
“No. We are not because nothing they fucking do means anything to me,” he countered, his determination sticking to every word like it was clinging for dear life.
“... Nothing’s going in, is it?”
He laughed because it wasn’t and it was his fault and perhaps it was always his fault but he’d die before he admitted anything.
“Fine,” she said, and for the first time there was a chill in her voice he hadn’t heard before. “Let’s fight.”
They settled everything in the orphanage with fights.
Dispute over what little toys they had? Fight. Bumped shoulders? Fight. Had a bit of a squabble over some childhood fancy? Fight. Gutter kids had neither the inclination nor the capacity for much empathy, and communication was, to put it bluntly, the pussy option. When you had an issue, you asserted it with a really loud mouth or a really big fist.
Zipper relied a lot on the former, but she wasn’t averse to the latter.
She hadn’t had a good fight in a long time. Fact was, not counting the embarrassment in Saun where she and Robin brawled, she hadn’t had a good fight in arcs - and for good reason. It was a bump in the schedule. It was messy, it was bloody, it tore clothes and harmed presentation. It was sweaty and dirty and she was above that part of her life and, and, and, and, and-
She enjoyed it.
Paradox as it was, she enjoyed it.
Channel it to war, they said - but a war was not two bodies tearing into each other until the better man -or woman- stood tall and the loser lay broken. War was a dozen vocations that never saw combat, war was half a dozen training exercises in an arc that saw no real fight. War was logistics and coordination and a whole lot of waiting. War was the jungle with no end in sight, not 25 bits in a cage or a ring or an alley with no other factor beyond some luck and what you could do.
War was not about the you, but the we.
And she never liked an audience.
“You have zero capacity for self-improvement, Robin Stark, so here’s how it’s gonna do down.” Zipper said. “No magic, no eyes or groin - not that you have one, as far I can see. I win? We’re done with this conversation. No more shit from you. You win? I’ll let you waffle around this joint, free to sing with your elements till we get back to Etzos and never see each other again.”
And for once, he listened. Or, at least, he looked like he did. He abandoned his position on the ground and drew himself to his full height.
It was hard to say who went for the staredown first, but they found themselves face-to-face within the next trill.
“Fine. No magic. No hair pulling,” he smiled, his teeth showing, white and clean despite the rest of him.
“That was your preferred tactic, not mine.” she said. She was rusty, no doubt, but if there was any consolation, it was this:
He fought like a cuntin’ perfumed lady.
Last edited by Zip on Thu Nov 23, 2017 5:47 am, edited 1 time in total. word count: 458
“Whatever, deal,” Robin said as they gave each other an arm’s length of space.
He was still smiling as he swung his left arm towards her head. His ether boiled inside, threatening to spill. Robin ignored it, grimacing as he stumbled, forgetting what it was like to move without help. His body felt heavier, an awkward flesh covered bag of rocks and muscle.
She dodged it like he swung it in slow-mo, stepping to the side with her hands raised up. Chin tucked down. Shit, this didn’t seem as good an idea as it was a few trills ago.
And then he threw his whole body into her, driving them both into the wall. He pushed hard, leveraging his stone and weight. He practically buried her underneath himself as he continued to grind her into the wall, hoping his weight was enough to smother her and end it quickly.
His gave up any notions of that the moment a sharp pain in his side exploded, followed by another, and another, and another. For someone as slender as her, she sure packed a mean hook.
Robin moved, slowly, an effort to catch her fists but she otter’d out from under him. He raised his hand high, he decided to let physics work for him, and dropped a flat palm across her cheek. He jumped at her, a desperate attempt to pin her down, but she was quick and his decisions were painted on an unfortunately expressive face.
But he had the size, he had the strength, he had bones of stone and the power of the earth anchored into his very being. This wasn’t like the first time they had a physical spat - no amount of skill could supplant the fact that he was almost twice her weight, knew how she moved, and could just crush her against the wall and press her in until she begged to give in.
Two very tired combatants in the aftermath of a brawl - one sprawled on his back, sweaty and heaving and tired with nothing to show for all his missed swings, and wasted energy, and brute attempts at trying to pin his smaller opponent, the other doing her very best to make it seem like the last 15 bits had been child’s play, and failing badly at it, and-
Zipper pressed one foot down upon a very spent Robin’s chest. His eyes were closed in exhaustion, his face wracked with the kind of incredulity and shame that could have only come from the humiliation one would get if they, say, got their asses handed to them by the very same girl within the very same 30 trials.
Well, okay, the first one was an interrupted draw - but she was winning. Only a fool would deny that.
“I dare you,” she said, staring down at him. “I dare you to strike me down with one of your pet phenomena, Stark. Go on. Ain’t nothing without the --”
A breeze, that same fucking breeze that followed him around like a sick otter and --
Dark Immortals in Rhakros, she was spending too much time with boulder fucker. She inhaled, loudly, taking whatever air was in the room and forcing it into her lungs because she was the fucking boss of this two bit show and she wasn’t going to let one piss pot and his personal storm cloud get the better of her.
She pressed her foot harder into his chest. She frowned; it was like she was stepping on stone. “Are we fucking done?” No response, she moved her heel up to his neck and grinded down like he was a scurrying cockroach. “Or do you want to summon your elemental abominations to clean up yet another Robin Stark mess.” She didn’t smile; she didn’t need to. The sneer was in her voice. “Robin, play me the song of your people: Lose, lose, lose, lose, looooooooooooose- Are we done, seriously? I have work to do.”
He was looking for a way out, she could see that; a small part of her, otter-small, could even respect that. He tried to push up with what little energy he surely did not have, but she pressed down against his neck harder.
“Fucking fine.” he said between breaths. “Get off before something hits you,” he grimaced and the world took a breath of relief when it seemed she was about to relent.
She didn’t.
“I want to hear you say it.”
“Say what?” Even now, in his most vulnerable, he held fast to his pride, to his stubbornness, to that sickening need to deny her at every turn.
“I categorically deny any claim that Defiers are better than etherists and my shame will drive me into the mountains to train for the rest of my miserable speck of a life OR in the interest of saving some time you can go with a simple-” Her bare foot moved to press down on his face now, her feet tickling his chin. Fates, he brought the gloater out in her. “You win.”
Last edited by Zip on Thu Nov 23, 2017 5:42 am, edited 1 time in total. word count: 531
“You win,” Robin screamed. He stared at her with dead eyes and silence. The wind scuttled across the wooden floor, pushing loose dirt into the air. His body trembled with weakness and the wind tried desperately to soothe his aches and his exhaustion and his soreness, collaborating with the dirt to bring comfort to him. It begged to fight. It hungered for his favor.
Zipper almost seemed disappointed that he yielded so quickly. She knew, or at least he suspected she knew, the words meant almost nothing to him. Oaths were things he kept with soil and rivers and port winds. She took the foot off him, seemed to consider extending him a hand for a moment.
But she didn’t.
He wouldn’t have taken it anyway.
“One final time,” Zipper said as she walked away, not even waiting for him to get up. “If this falls through, it’s both our heads.”
“What are they going to do to you,” to us, but he wouldn’t admit he was treading fear, “That you’re so desperate to please them.”
She stopped for a trill, then continued walking on. Her words were whispered but the wind caught it, sneaked it away from her, carried it to him and told him:
Nothing that I haven’t allowed them to do.
And in that moment, he knew that no matter how powerful, how vicious, how seemingly in control of a mage you were - you were still shackled to the whims of a civilization that demanded .
In that moment, he swore that he wouldn’t be made like her. He would be free.
If only he knew how much worse it was going to get.
Not for the first time, she wondered why anyone did anything.
Build a self-sustainable police force from the locals, put your ear to the ground and make it stick, find favor in the local powers, serving Etzos, protecting it from the jungles that divide them from the wretched power of the Rhakrosian trinity, be a good Black Guard-
There’s those two words: serving Etzos.
For what?
A long time ago, she swore that Etzos would serve her needs as she saw fit. A long time ago, she swore that the moment the city had no further use for her, she would find her foot out the door first thing. She would grab Finn, assuage his protests about friends and a life here and whatever sentimental garbage he would drowning in, drug him if necessary, and never look back.
And now here she was: serving Etzos.
Relieved of the power of the uniform, sent off to tame the wilds that was Foster’s that resisted her at every turn, forced to live among people even lower than the common Etzorian.
Forced to suffer Stark daily.
If nothing else, it gave her perspective she wasn’t seeing while she was in Etzos, cheap thrills that came from the power of a uniform that was slaved to her. She made a mistake: One way or another, she bought into the lie of power for freedom.
That was for other people. She was not other people.
And with that, Fiona Zippomaria O’Connor began planning her new victory conditions for the future.
Just a couple of points before I get to your review.
1. With the kind of language in this thread it should be marked as "Mature" and the warning in the request should have clarified that there was foul language. Whilst that's not a problem for most of us, this forum has, and welcomes, players as young as 13. Anything over a PG13 should be labelled such - I've edited the thread to include that, please make sure to do so in future. Thanks!
2. I understand the way that you've been writing threads together and the "godmodding" of each other. As I've said to you on Discord, though, it doesn't work for skills. It's great in terms of social threads, but I can't award a knowledge to Zipper if Robin is writing about her doing it. Even if she has given permission for him to godmod her. Knowledge is awarded to the player who writes it, so I would very strongly suggest that you don't use this kind of writing for skill knowledge threads, purely for social ones.
Thanks both!
Robin Stark
Overview
I fully understand this style of writing and the flow it gives the conversation - however, it is very conversation focused and so what it does is mean that there are some details lacking (like, where they are exactly - which might impact fame, for example?). I also really can't stress enough that I can't award knowledges for something you haven't done in a thread. Please do drop me a pm if you've got any questions / concerns, and I'll be happy to discuss. Thanks.
Points
XP:15
Fame: NA
Loot
Nothing to speak of (few bruises etc)
Knowledge
Skill Knowledge Awarded:
Acrobatics: Stumbling Can be an Advantage
Acrobatics: Weight is a Hinderance
Acrobatics: Falling with Purpose
Endurance: Taking a Punch
Acrobatics: Stone’s Weight - moving with stone bones
Endurance: Fighting in a drawn-out brawl
Unarmed Combat: Throwing a Punch
Unarmed Combat: Slamming a smaller opponent against the wall
Unarmed Combat: Slap
Skill Knowledge Requested, but not awarded:
Acrobatics: Ducking I can't see anywhere in this thread where you explain / describe / discuss Robin doing this? - changed to Unarmed Combat: Slap as per Robin's request.
Non-Skill knowledge:
Zipper: Shackled to an insane institutional construct called Etzos
Zipper
Overview
As I've said to you - I fully understand this style of writing and the flow it gives the conversation - however, it is very conversation focused and so what it does is mean that there are some details lacking (like, where they are exactly - which might impact fame, for example?). I also really can't stress enough that I can't award knowledges for something you haven't done in a thread. Please do drop me a pm if you've got any questions / concerns, and I'll be happy to discuss. Thanks.
Points
XP: 15
Fame: None
Loot
Nothing to speak of. Bruises etc.
Knowledge
Skill knowledge awarded:
Intimidation: Expressing your dominance by stepping on a downed opponent
Intimidation: Letting danger seep into your tone
Unarmed Combat: Fighting someone bigger, stronger, and more durable than yourself
Edited in: Knowledge awarded.
Intimidation: Daring a Defier to strike you dead
Intimidation: Projecting an image of unshakable bravado
Intimidation: Forcing an admission of defeat from a downed opponent
Discipline: Projecting just the right amount of productive anger
Negotiation: Offering an ultimatum
Leadership: Addressing blatant insubordination
