- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
[X] Adorie's Bodyguards
For the memes.
For the memes.
A Simple Transaction I
- Thread starter Rihaku
- Start date
- Original
I'll double his offer! Ill vote for sword repair TWICE next vote!!
- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
Did you think I had forgotten?I'll invert his offer, and vote against sword repair next vote.
Did you think I had forgiven?
Your transgression at "Wind full of knives" is forever imprinted on my soul. Soon you will behold my terrible vengeance when I unleash YA Aeira on an unsuspecting thread.
Birdsie
Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy
- Location
- Poland
CYOA-based narrative. Give me the A-r-e-t-e.
Wordcount: 2355
Red Heart
Their deal was completed, the Broker's wares purchased. The unpressed mystical coinage exchanged hands, and the Broker smiled in satisfaction.
Already, the inheritor of those coins was able to feel the conjugated firmness of the magics he'd purchased settling into him.
The magics of the colors. A billowing cloak of shadowy energies draped around him, violet and carmine in dark hues, with subtle hints of reaching amethyst. Also the full-red potency that now dreamt in his heart and the vessels of his blood, the tint of aethereal essence intermingling with the mundane blood of his veins. With them came a sharpness and fond desire: gullibility, but also focus and ambition, both of which married to his determination. It was a force of personality enough to keep pushing on.
The magics of the numbers followed them. The Third Eye opened in a conflux of the invisible strings of Astral energy, with the power to see through lie and treachery no different from how a mortal eye peers through a glass. Alongside it, came tenfold strength, speed, and resilience: uncomplicated but essential.
The last of his purchases: Sword and Plate, a warrior's final remit. The slayer's tool, and the human aegis invented to protect from such tools. These ones, Curse Broker offered with a finger-snap; one decisive click, whence the items appeared on the inheritor's person, the articulated plate suit of burnished steel already strapped taut, the sword placed elegantly into a black leather scabbard. Both items fit him like a glove.
The Curse Broker departed as mysteriously as he arrived, in a fog of white mist, leaving the sole inheritor standing in the darkness of withered trees, the moonbeams of horrific yellow curiously draped over the withered wooden tines of the tree-tops. The earth beneath was like barren gray ash, but with the rigidity of hard sand.
These were the furthermost reaches of the Realm's great threshold, the forgotten zones: the Risen Lands. The man about to stalk through them did not have a name of his own, but he decided to name himself for what defined him thus far: the things he'd bought and the things he'd bought them with.
Red the Inheritor stepped out of the prowling bushes and drew in a refreshing breath of the dark air, the clarity of the night permeating within his lungs as he did. The night was cold, but sweet in an indescribable way. There was no mustiness or unpleasant charcoal stink, only the purity of an ever-dark sacred night.
A moment later, he sighed in disbelief. Nevermind sanctity - this place was cursed.
Already? He expected the Hunt to converge upon him soon, but not as soon as within a minute of his transaction being completed. He knew, intelligently, that with the purchases he made, came the curses, but he'd expected to have some time. Apparently not.
The commingling trepidation mixing in his breast released itself in a flinch as the bushes shivered, releasing the form of a Shadow Beast.
It was a creature of nightmare. A rabid, black-furred fox the size of a large, grizzled bear with eyes like molten candleflames. There was a low growl from between its clenched, sharpened teeth. Within nary a second, it leaped upon him with the intent to murder and rip.
But his focus was as firm as unstained steel, he could see through simple deceit and knew this was no feint, and his reflex was many times the superior of a mortal human.
The Sword undrawn, he dashed forward and crouched low as he did, managing to slow just after the apex of its trajectory, under the paws. With an upward swing, he beheaded the beast midflight, a splatter of darkened blood now gracing the length of the blade, his shoulder and the ashen earth. The Inheritor came to a skid meters away, watching as the corpse of the Shadow Beast went slack, rolling down as a dumb, uncontrolled ragdoll.
On the forest clearing, the white-blue summerblade sang triumphant. Within its realm manifested a stack of furs in ruddy-orange, white, and black. Impromptu bedding.
It ended so simply. One blow to kill one foe. The grime of trepidation was replaced, a spark of post-deed excitement and satisfaction replacing it on its throne.
When he attempted to drain the corpse of its essence, with the provenance of Emperor Red, he disappointingly found it almost emptied of anything worth taking. It seemed like if he wanted to use that method, he'd need to capture his victims alive, or at least more alive than as a beheaded corpse. There was also the option of simply draining the essence his sword balled up before it could form an item. It would be a trade-off, unless he could master a technique of conjoinery with the Sword. If user was Sword, and Sword was user, it wouldn't matter who absorbed the essence. But that could wait for the future.
He didn't know if the bodies of Shadow Beasts could be used as food, and he'd prefer not to even try, especially with a carnivorous one. He left the corpse of the fox alone, hopefully to dissolve into rot or be pecked by carrion birds.
Instead of waltzing about, the Inheritor called upon his nameless Sword to chop down a nearby tree. With tenfold muscle-power and a whisper-sharp blade, the lumber fell in three precise swings. The blade continued to softly hum as this happened.
Despite its ghastly appearance, the remnants of life had lingered in the tree's dry bark, and the Sword-Realm now held a proper bed, with furs as a mattress.
Now that one matter of sleep had been settled, Red decided to start looking around properly. He would need water and food, possibly more wood to make a fire.
Security was already resolved. Most of the Risen wouldn't be smart enough to consider that a sword stabbed into a rock held a micro-realm in which potential prey was hiding, so if he wanted to be safe from the world, he could be. It wasn't as though anyone else could simply force their way into the blade's realm. That being said, he couldn't simply devote himself to full-scale meditative essence cultivation unless he secured basic amenities to ensure survival: food and water to start.
And so, he decided to set out and adventure. The Inheritor spent an hour traveling the vastness of the nearby woods, its mist-shrouded pathways among withered trees welcoming him deeper and deeper into their midst.
He encountered and slew a score of the Risen as he descended, none of them intelligent or for that matter, particularly aware, accumulating further velocity in the cloak of purchased shadow that billowed around him, small gifts of drained essence, and a set of skeleton-themed furniture in the micro-realm, including a rather comfy couch that he strongly suspected was made partially from human skin. Its texture felt oddly smooth and relaxing, but he didn't let his mind be consumed by decadence.
Eventually, he stumbled into what seemed to be a very large cemetery. A mist-banked fence of gray round stone, with protrusions of gothic steel in sky-pointed arrows and a black iron gate of similar make. Inside, most of the graves had been disturbed at some point, and there didn't seem to be a single one untouched: it would make sense that people would burn corpses rather than bury them if they started rising up as undead.
Speaking of undead, the cemetery was filled chock-full of them. An entire small army of monstrous abominations, wailing and reaching out for him as he approached. The gates clattered open, and Red dashed forward to meet the Risen in battle on the small copse in front of the cemetery. With the speed he'd gathered from the undead he fought on the way there, he was much faster than any of the stumbling, festering corpses attempting to consume him. Most of them were ungainly and clumsy, while he was swiftness manifest on a pair of graceful feet, dancing, weaving, and cutting at those most exposed to receive the judgment of his Sword.
Red's blade continued to sing in an ever-intensifying orchestra, a cacophonous wailing of victorious resplendence the Risen met with groans and moans of something resembling unintelligent, animalistic terror as it came down on them again and again with no remorse. With each swing, there was a nasty sound of wet cracks or a rotten watermelon exploding as he cut through bone to reach the heart, or through skull to crush the brain. It was nasty, gory work; at its end, the scent of rotten blood and flesh permeated the cemetery gates and settled down on the location like a contented pet, purring and contaminating it.
The Sword-Realm now held a large, bouncy castle for children, made with the blubbery elastic fat of a human belly rather than inflated air; its framing was bone, its bounciness derived from layers of cartilage and muscle that waited to launch the user when pressed. It had a long mat for shoes, hewn from human skin, and dyed red with blood. There was also a pinball machine that used rounded human eyeballs and had springs made from more cartilage.
At that point, Red decided he'd drain the essence of lesser Risen directly rather than letting it flow into the sword: if amusement park attractions were all it could make from such beings, he'd rather have an infinitesimal progression boost.
His march through the cemetery then continued mostly without a disturbance. There were a couple of lingering Risen on the grounds that he slew, as well as a rather surprising Shadow Beast on a chain, in the form of a guard hound protecting what must have been the grave digger's hut. He managed to kill it rather easily with a thrust into the neck area, as it couldn't escape with the chain around its neck. Red absorbed its essence, rather than letting it settle into the Sword's realm.
Unfortunately, the grave digger's hut didn't have anything of interest. It seemed like everything had been plundered at some point in the recent past, excluding the sad remnants of a broken china set on the floor.
Eventually, Red wandered into a mausoleum of ancient stone in the very heart of the cemetery, its stained windows set in impressive scenes of smiling people with crooked ears long-broken, its halls covered in a layer of grim dust. From the wooden gates of some internal chamber emerged a set of particularly well-assembled Risen, covered in jury-rigged armor suits with pilfered weapons: sickles, maces, and scythes. The armaments of the peasantry.
They didn't set upon him as most Risen did. For a moment, there was a staring contest between them, until Red's eyes narrowed.
With a movement that was nearly automatic, he twirled the blade and deflected the crossbow bolt from one of the mausoleum windows. It was needless, as the bolt wouldn't have done anything against his armor, but it paid to be cautious.
Their ploy having failed, the Risen growled and ran at him together as a horde, with the hopes of overwhelming him. Choosing to meet them outright, Red dashed forward and started cutting a path through their entire score. The summerblade moved in a flurry, left and right, diagonally from top to bottom, back up. Like a butcher, he carved through the entire platoon of Risen, their restless essence running into the blade and then being ingested through his gloves before it could properly settle and crystallize into another set of probably-trivial objects.
His essence compounded from the siphoned butcherings even more, and the magic of Violet kept increasing and wreathing the sword, conferring additional sharpness to each ruthless blow, letting his swings grow in their confidence.
The last several of them, he cut with the Sword but did not absorb directly into himself. He permitted the Sword to do the honors, curious what an intelligent Risen would yield, and if there would be a divergence from the pattern. Once he was done cleaning the last of the foes up and draining any recumbent essence in the environment, as well as making sure that it was secure and abandoned, Red stepped into the blade.
There was a difference indeed. Red blinked in realization.
The Sword-Realm expanded ever-so-slightly, to now hold a fraction of the graveyard mausoleum, including a couple of skeletal peasants tending to a small field. His bed was now resting within, a bedroom like a crypt, with an entirely separate room with the furniture and amusement toys he'd created earlier.
Interesting. The undead were apparently peasants, and that sliver of essence created a field they'd work over for him. There was a stream the field appeared to be drawing on water from, so that was one thing crossed off the bucket list.
He wondered if the field produced edible food - it appeared too small to grow enough to feed him entirely within the usual crop cycle, but the Sword-Realm didn't necessarily have to comport itself to the usual rules, whether because the vegetables and grains it made were that much better, or because time might apply to them differently. When he asked one of the servitor undead, it replied the next harvest would be in a fortnight and was expected to yield at least a bushel of fresh grains and oats, as well as several kilograms of carrots and potatoes. This depended, of course, on if he kept drinking their farming water.
Sheepishly, he apologized and indicated he would try to find another source. The skeleton didn't seem to care, returning to its restless task of tending the fields.
But that was enough for the day. With the blade stabbed into a protruding rock in the graveyard, Red decided to take a break for the rest of the day, take some time in order to cultivate his essence, and then sleep.
On the next day, his search for civilization would continue.
Their deal was completed, the Broker's wares purchased. The unpressed mystical coinage exchanged hands, and the Broker smiled in satisfaction.
Already, the inheritor of those coins was able to feel the conjugated firmness of the magics he'd purchased settling into him.
The magics of the colors. A billowing cloak of shadowy energies draped around him, violet and carmine in dark hues, with subtle hints of reaching amethyst. Also the full-red potency that now dreamt in his heart and the vessels of his blood, the tint of aethereal essence intermingling with the mundane blood of his veins. With them came a sharpness and fond desire: gullibility, but also focus and ambition, both of which married to his determination. It was a force of personality enough to keep pushing on.
The magics of the numbers followed them. The Third Eye opened in a conflux of the invisible strings of Astral energy, with the power to see through lie and treachery no different from how a mortal eye peers through a glass. Alongside it, came tenfold strength, speed, and resilience: uncomplicated but essential.
The last of his purchases: Sword and Plate, a warrior's final remit. The slayer's tool, and the human aegis invented to protect from such tools. These ones, Curse Broker offered with a finger-snap; one decisive click, whence the items appeared on the inheritor's person, the articulated plate suit of burnished steel already strapped taut, the sword placed elegantly into a black leather scabbard. Both items fit him like a glove.
The Curse Broker departed as mysteriously as he arrived, in a fog of white mist, leaving the sole inheritor standing in the darkness of withered trees, the moonbeams of horrific yellow curiously draped over the withered wooden tines of the tree-tops. The earth beneath was like barren gray ash, but with the rigidity of hard sand.
These were the furthermost reaches of the Realm's great threshold, the forgotten zones: the Risen Lands. The man about to stalk through them did not have a name of his own, but he decided to name himself for what defined him thus far: the things he'd bought and the things he'd bought them with.
Red the Inheritor stepped out of the prowling bushes and drew in a refreshing breath of the dark air, the clarity of the night permeating within his lungs as he did. The night was cold, but sweet in an indescribable way. There was no mustiness or unpleasant charcoal stink, only the purity of an ever-dark sacred night.
A moment later, he sighed in disbelief. Nevermind sanctity - this place was cursed.
Already? He expected the Hunt to converge upon him soon, but not as soon as within a minute of his transaction being completed. He knew, intelligently, that with the purchases he made, came the curses, but he'd expected to have some time. Apparently not.
The commingling trepidation mixing in his breast released itself in a flinch as the bushes shivered, releasing the form of a Shadow Beast.
It was a creature of nightmare. A rabid, black-furred fox the size of a large, grizzled bear with eyes like molten candleflames. There was a low growl from between its clenched, sharpened teeth. Within nary a second, it leaped upon him with the intent to murder and rip.
But his focus was as firm as unstained steel, he could see through simple deceit and knew this was no feint, and his reflex was many times the superior of a mortal human.
The Sword undrawn, he dashed forward and crouched low as he did, managing to slow just after the apex of its trajectory, under the paws. With an upward swing, he beheaded the beast midflight, a splatter of darkened blood now gracing the length of the blade, his shoulder and the ashen earth. The Inheritor came to a skid meters away, watching as the corpse of the Shadow Beast went slack, rolling down as a dumb, uncontrolled ragdoll.
On the forest clearing, the white-blue summerblade sang triumphant. Within its realm manifested a stack of furs in ruddy-orange, white, and black. Impromptu bedding.
It ended so simply. One blow to kill one foe. The grime of trepidation was replaced, a spark of post-deed excitement and satisfaction replacing it on its throne.
When he attempted to drain the corpse of its essence, with the provenance of Emperor Red, he disappointingly found it almost emptied of anything worth taking. It seemed like if he wanted to use that method, he'd need to capture his victims alive, or at least more alive than as a beheaded corpse. There was also the option of simply draining the essence his sword balled up before it could form an item. It would be a trade-off, unless he could master a technique of conjoinery with the Sword. If user was Sword, and Sword was user, it wouldn't matter who absorbed the essence. But that could wait for the future.
He didn't know if the bodies of Shadow Beasts could be used as food, and he'd prefer not to even try, especially with a carnivorous one. He left the corpse of the fox alone, hopefully to dissolve into rot or be pecked by carrion birds.
Instead of waltzing about, the Inheritor called upon his nameless Sword to chop down a nearby tree. With tenfold muscle-power and a whisper-sharp blade, the lumber fell in three precise swings. The blade continued to softly hum as this happened.
Despite its ghastly appearance, the remnants of life had lingered in the tree's dry bark, and the Sword-Realm now held a proper bed, with furs as a mattress.
Now that one matter of sleep had been settled, Red decided to start looking around properly. He would need water and food, possibly more wood to make a fire.
Security was already resolved. Most of the Risen wouldn't be smart enough to consider that a sword stabbed into a rock held a micro-realm in which potential prey was hiding, so if he wanted to be safe from the world, he could be. It wasn't as though anyone else could simply force their way into the blade's realm. That being said, he couldn't simply devote himself to full-scale meditative essence cultivation unless he secured basic amenities to ensure survival: food and water to start.
And so, he decided to set out and adventure. The Inheritor spent an hour traveling the vastness of the nearby woods, its mist-shrouded pathways among withered trees welcoming him deeper and deeper into their midst.
He encountered and slew a score of the Risen as he descended, none of them intelligent or for that matter, particularly aware, accumulating further velocity in the cloak of purchased shadow that billowed around him, small gifts of drained essence, and a set of skeleton-themed furniture in the micro-realm, including a rather comfy couch that he strongly suspected was made partially from human skin. Its texture felt oddly smooth and relaxing, but he didn't let his mind be consumed by decadence.
Eventually, he stumbled into what seemed to be a very large cemetery. A mist-banked fence of gray round stone, with protrusions of gothic steel in sky-pointed arrows and a black iron gate of similar make. Inside, most of the graves had been disturbed at some point, and there didn't seem to be a single one untouched: it would make sense that people would burn corpses rather than bury them if they started rising up as undead.
Speaking of undead, the cemetery was filled chock-full of them. An entire small army of monstrous abominations, wailing and reaching out for him as he approached. The gates clattered open, and Red dashed forward to meet the Risen in battle on the small copse in front of the cemetery. With the speed he'd gathered from the undead he fought on the way there, he was much faster than any of the stumbling, festering corpses attempting to consume him. Most of them were ungainly and clumsy, while he was swiftness manifest on a pair of graceful feet, dancing, weaving, and cutting at those most exposed to receive the judgment of his Sword.
Red's blade continued to sing in an ever-intensifying orchestra, a cacophonous wailing of victorious resplendence the Risen met with groans and moans of something resembling unintelligent, animalistic terror as it came down on them again and again with no remorse. With each swing, there was a nasty sound of wet cracks or a rotten watermelon exploding as he cut through bone to reach the heart, or through skull to crush the brain. It was nasty, gory work; at its end, the scent of rotten blood and flesh permeated the cemetery gates and settled down on the location like a contented pet, purring and contaminating it.
The Sword-Realm now held a large, bouncy castle for children, made with the blubbery elastic fat of a human belly rather than inflated air; its framing was bone, its bounciness derived from layers of cartilage and muscle that waited to launch the user when pressed. It had a long mat for shoes, hewn from human skin, and dyed red with blood. There was also a pinball machine that used rounded human eyeballs and had springs made from more cartilage.
At that point, Red decided he'd drain the essence of lesser Risen directly rather than letting it flow into the sword: if amusement park attractions were all it could make from such beings, he'd rather have an infinitesimal progression boost.
His march through the cemetery then continued mostly without a disturbance. There were a couple of lingering Risen on the grounds that he slew, as well as a rather surprising Shadow Beast on a chain, in the form of a guard hound protecting what must have been the grave digger's hut. He managed to kill it rather easily with a thrust into the neck area, as it couldn't escape with the chain around its neck. Red absorbed its essence, rather than letting it settle into the Sword's realm.
Unfortunately, the grave digger's hut didn't have anything of interest. It seemed like everything had been plundered at some point in the recent past, excluding the sad remnants of a broken china set on the floor.
Eventually, Red wandered into a mausoleum of ancient stone in the very heart of the cemetery, its stained windows set in impressive scenes of smiling people with crooked ears long-broken, its halls covered in a layer of grim dust. From the wooden gates of some internal chamber emerged a set of particularly well-assembled Risen, covered in jury-rigged armor suits with pilfered weapons: sickles, maces, and scythes. The armaments of the peasantry.
They didn't set upon him as most Risen did. For a moment, there was a staring contest between them, until Red's eyes narrowed.
With a movement that was nearly automatic, he twirled the blade and deflected the crossbow bolt from one of the mausoleum windows. It was needless, as the bolt wouldn't have done anything against his armor, but it paid to be cautious.
Their ploy having failed, the Risen growled and ran at him together as a horde, with the hopes of overwhelming him. Choosing to meet them outright, Red dashed forward and started cutting a path through their entire score. The summerblade moved in a flurry, left and right, diagonally from top to bottom, back up. Like a butcher, he carved through the entire platoon of Risen, their restless essence running into the blade and then being ingested through his gloves before it could properly settle and crystallize into another set of probably-trivial objects.
His essence compounded from the siphoned butcherings even more, and the magic of Violet kept increasing and wreathing the sword, conferring additional sharpness to each ruthless blow, letting his swings grow in their confidence.
The last several of them, he cut with the Sword but did not absorb directly into himself. He permitted the Sword to do the honors, curious what an intelligent Risen would yield, and if there would be a divergence from the pattern. Once he was done cleaning the last of the foes up and draining any recumbent essence in the environment, as well as making sure that it was secure and abandoned, Red stepped into the blade.
There was a difference indeed. Red blinked in realization.
The Sword-Realm expanded ever-so-slightly, to now hold a fraction of the graveyard mausoleum, including a couple of skeletal peasants tending to a small field. His bed was now resting within, a bedroom like a crypt, with an entirely separate room with the furniture and amusement toys he'd created earlier.
Interesting. The undead were apparently peasants, and that sliver of essence created a field they'd work over for him. There was a stream the field appeared to be drawing on water from, so that was one thing crossed off the bucket list.
He wondered if the field produced edible food - it appeared too small to grow enough to feed him entirely within the usual crop cycle, but the Sword-Realm didn't necessarily have to comport itself to the usual rules, whether because the vegetables and grains it made were that much better, or because time might apply to them differently. When he asked one of the servitor undead, it replied the next harvest would be in a fortnight and was expected to yield at least a bushel of fresh grains and oats, as well as several kilograms of carrots and potatoes. This depended, of course, on if he kept drinking their farming water.
Sheepishly, he apologized and indicated he would try to find another source. The skeleton didn't seem to care, returning to its restless task of tending the fields.
But that was enough for the day. With the blade stabbed into a protruding rock in the graveyard, Red decided to take a break for the rest of the day, take some time in order to cultivate his essence, and then sleep.
On the next day, his search for civilization would continue.
Lealope
Not yet invincible
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Wow, yet another thing Ten Thousand improves! Assuming that your mastery over Essence does not provide that kind of cognitive power regardless, which isn't guaranteed. Using the Diagram schema, I could imagine some kind of Knowledge effect that would allow for parallel cognition. That would be pretty high end though and any kind of direct mental alteration to the underlying structure of your brain seems a little bit dicey without some kind of training wheels.
ImperatorV
The Laughing One
- Location
- The Voyaging Realm
Hey, isn't there another Ring of Power in the Human Sphere? That would seem to be a prime candidate for seizing control of the Republic.
Rihaku
The Internet
Let's hope your enemies don't hurt themselves in their confusion!
That would ultimately result in fewer picks for Hunger, after all.
I wonder which polity Asterios belongs to? Procyon had a star-themed name too, but that's weak evidence. Still, we're accumulating party members faster than we are Rings, and that just won't do. We really should get around to purchasing Ruling and declaring a Ring War; it might even be easier to buy the EFB full-price rather than spending picks on it, despite already having Chief Dominion.
DkArthas
CAPITAL IS TO BLAME
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- They
Yeah, we should get some more rings soon. Adorie's massive rank should make her very well suited to one. Letrizia also has sharpbright though relatively low rank.
Edit:
[] Elixir Royal Privateer Commission
[X] Nilfellian Special Expeditionary Legion
[X] Adorie's Bodyguards
Edit:
[] Elixir Royal Privateer Commission
[X] Nilfellian Special Expeditionary Legion
[X] Adorie's Bodyguards
Last edited:
We are going to take one pick generation week in order to spend our Arete, and RR is a possible purchase. It does face a tough competition though - old staples such as OaF 2 or SJUC, newly unlocked SJUC, as of yet unfinished FK etc. Even Companions might prove extremely valuable if they stacked well with Adorie's Rank buff to Hunger.
Keep chasing shinies, being a pirate, being a hero, and doing whatever fun thing pops into our head until we end up conquering it by accident while trying to accomplish some other more interesting goal.
The clear answer is to have Adorie hire the Elixir Royal Privateers as her personal bodyguards
[X] Adorie's Bodyguards
Pirates don't announce they're pirates until they strike
Pirates don't announce they're pirates until they strike
The worst words any planet governor could hear in his life: Adorie and her bodyguards are going for a walk on their planet
