Omegahugger
Inattentive Idiot
They probably used a rod to pull him in and a net to pull him up.
nWoD: That Savage Coast
Acatalepsy
Firewall Proxy
- Location
- The Diamond Age
[X] Killing him. Killing him and savoring it.
When they ask how I died, tell them: still angry.
When they ask how I died, tell them: still angry.
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ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
It was kind of cut-and-dried
I'm assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that focusing on the floating or landbound fellow Changelings will give Lumiere the chance to skedadle. Either way, "Kill Him To Death, Like A Lot" is a lot more certain.
Also clearly killing ain't much of a Dead End since Levi's literal first action was to say mean things to someone so she'd come over into biting distance.
- Location
- Nowhere
t was kind of cut-and-dried
Sorry, I didn't see it between the elaborate phrasing.
Yeah, he's going to be killed with death. Who's Lumiere though? Wasn't he named Jack?
Well, it depends, Levi right now is not in his fully human mind-state yet, and these two have done nothing but hurt him, so his reactions are understandable. However, later on he can feel regret or something (if he doesn't, potentially become a creepy thing that other changelings can't stand much). He's also of the Beast Kith, so more "primal" responses are understandable.
Luckily this is a mechanic-less narrative so the idiotic morality "laws" wouldn't apply here. Killing people (especially a fellow Changeling) is invariably a chance to lose Morality regardless of the circumstances, although you might get a bonus to the roll if you were doing it "for the right reasons". More importantly, imprisonment is also another sin for Changelings, and is considered a fate worse than death, even if it's a temporary detention.
...Yeah, this would need multiple homerules if you wanted to play this game with someone.
[X] Saving those most in need. There are others in the water, drowning and swimming, start with them.
LupineVolt
Now with 200% more Puns
- Location
- Michigan
[X] Saving those most in need. There are others in the water, drowning and swimming, start with them.
The more that we save the more people we can have at least tentatively on our side. Can't go wrong with making new friends.
The more that we save the more people we can have at least tentatively on our side. Can't go wrong with making new friends.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Saving those most in need. There are others in the water, drowning and swimming, start with them.
What I find most interesting here is that the "Killing him" option feels most natural and obvious, yet we still have other options. Snakeboi is consumed by anger, still tied up, one of his captors is dead and the other is terrified, and just fucking destroying him feels like a natural outgrowth of that.
So I'm voting for something else because I want to learn more about how Deep One Jr.'s mind works and how he makes the jump from pure primal fury to "saving people," when it doesn't quite seems to be his ballpark.
What I find most interesting here is that the "Killing him" option feels most natural and obvious, yet we still have other options. Snakeboi is consumed by anger, still tied up, one of his captors is dead and the other is terrified, and just fucking destroying him feels like a natural outgrowth of that.
So I'm voting for something else because I want to learn more about how Deep One Jr.'s mind works and how he makes the jump from pure primal fury to "saving people," when it doesn't quite seems to be his ballpark.
chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
[X] Saving those most in need. There are others in the water, drowning and swimming, start with them.
Omegahugger
Inattentive Idiot
... Our snakefriends?
Omicron convinced me.
[X] Saving those most in need. There are others in the water, drowning and swimming, start with them.
[X] Saving those most in need. There are others in the water, drowning and swimming, start with them.
- Location
- St. Petersburg
[X] Saving those most in need. There are others in the water, drowning and swimming, start with them.
The jump is not that hard to make if you realize what you are in the middle of.
By the way, how do you drown after escaping from the bottom of the Ocean? The changling we've killed also had a water-based theme, so isn't it a safe bet that most people here are the same? If they didn't have bodies suited for swimming, they wouldn't make it this far in the first place...
The jump is not that hard to make if you realize what you are in the middle of.
By the way, how do you drown after escaping from the bottom of the Ocean? The changling we've killed also had a water-based theme, so isn't it a safe bet that most people here are the same? If they didn't have bodies suited for swimming, they wouldn't make it this far in the first place...
Prologue Part Four: Phantom Limbs
TenfoldShields
Lounging on a Hoard of Words
- Pronouns
- He/Him
He flinches and it's a visceral, full body thing. Stomach tensing, sinews in his neck straining, the flames in his eyes shrinking, thinning down to slender tapers of light. Gently, gently, he lays her out. Her head resting on the lip of a lesser dune, her legs on a ridge of powdered shell. Saliva trickles from the corner of her mouth. Her lids half-slack, blood leaking, clouding beneath the white matter of her eyes. Jack shifts his weight: his thighs bunching, chest expanding as he forces himself to breathe. He's going to do the sensible thing, the only thing he can do really, he's going to leave her and run and save himself.
"I didn't say you could go." Your voice is soft, gentle, it'd almost be caring, almost be kind if it wasn't for the venom dripping, clear and caustic from your tongue. If your chest wasn't glistening with red, if your mouth wasn't caked in her blood. You know what to do, you know how this goes. Sand rasps and grinds as you roll back onto your knees, body drawn up upon itself, your eyes flickering, twitching beneath the long fringe of black hair. Darting from piece to piece, part to portion of the waxen man. His hands. His legs. His throat. His hands. His legs. His throat. His hands. His legs. His throat.
His flames starting to spit and sputter in the rain.
"What's the worst part of this Jack? Is it me or you? Better me, I think, than something else; I mean -heh- it wasn't easy but she went fast. But...oh Jack," and you draw it out into a tender sigh, breathing his name like he's your dearest friend, your closest confidant, pressing your other palm to your pectoral. His grey-green throat works as he swallows. "You wanted so badly to love her didn't you? And you did want her. You thought that would be enough."
Hold him pinned in place beneath the weight of your attention, the pressure of your gaze. A mouse hypnotized as the serpent slithers a little nearer, a little closer. Slowly, slowly, you work your arm free of the aching contortion. Worming it out from against your chest, reaching to the side. All the rest of you is trembling, cold adrenaline crashing into acid anger, setting your nerves all alight. But it's funny heh isn't it? Your hand's so steady.
"It's kinda amazing huh? After everything you're still not numb. There's still enough left inside to feel sick that you don't feel worse, to wonder why it doesn't hurt more. She should have been it right? 'Cause if not her then who?"
Push your nails into that fracture, work him wider as you test the slack, the give in the silver-lattice netting. Mercury white wires humming as you push down, brace yourself and push up until it starts to slice into you. The web wearing welts into your skin even as it distends and distort over your back. Rain beads on your scaled spine, dripping down the channels between your ribs. Your elbow clicks, your muscle aches. Fingers curl over something you can't see. Wrapping around empty air as cramps work beneath the skin.
"...Me~?" Silence. You smile, lips peeling back to show too many too-sharp teeth. "Isn't that a thought. If we're being honest I could probably make you forget all about her given a night or two. I have it on good authority I'm a pretty good-"
You falter, your words failing.
He's not looking at you. Why isn't he looking at you? Instead he's just staring at the empty space off to your side, the patch of nothing you're reaching out to, reaching in to. The spell slips, the serpent blinks; slow-curdling fury pops and, for a second, sizzles out. You...you can't remember what you were doing. Why you were doing it. You can taste it on the tip of your tongue, feel it on the edge of sensation; hanging there, fluttering. And in that second he surges to his feet and sprints away. Feet chewing up the shore, kicking up sprays of sand. You shout, lash out, and in that instant you rip it free from negative space. Tear it from the nothing.
ophidia
It's a hurricane in your hand. It's a thunderstorm in your fist. It doesn't materialize, it doesn't just appear, it shatters the world around it with a sound like breaking glass. Lightning crackling, crawling through the air as it sheds obsidian smoke and emerald embers. Vapor curling off in pale-grey ribbons as the last electric arcs die away. The spear glistens slickly, shining like polished black bone, like oil. Hungry veins the color of raw jade visibly pulsing, glowing, within. The leaf-shaped head lined in backswept barbs. You know what it wants. You know what it needs. Why wouldn't you when it fits your hand like it was made for it?
Jack's fallen, staring over his shoulder, eyes burning with panic even as he claws at the rise before him. You feel your temples pounding, the blood racing through your body. Your snakes spasm, contracting in, spreading out. The motions sudden, violent, as they work themselves up into a hissing, spitting, thicket of reptilian muscle.
You spin the spear once and the net comes undone. Splendid argent threads snapping, twanging like piano-wires. The lights burning out, leaving behind only ash and knotted twine. You stand on shaking legs, pushing yourself up with the butt of it; static whining in your aching head. Half the net is caught in your horns, wrapped in your twitching tail. Put the lance to your shoulder, sweep it out, and feel that snap too. Pull it from your crown. Swish your tail and sling the rest off. The rain is falling heavier now; but only around you, only lashing your back. The heavy pressure settling across your shoulders like a cloak. Your long, sculpted, scaled body dripping wet. The air reeks of ozone, verdant lightning flickering, flashing, around you. Jack's back up, he's running, he's only ten feet from the car. But you know you could catch even as frail as you are. You know if you stay angry you'll just glide up behind him, nice and easy, pin him down and ram the head through his fucking chest. And he'll fall, clawing at the door.
You're not moving. He's getting away.
Thunder booms overhead, drowning out the noise of your cloak; plucking at tattered, frayed threads of focus. A tigress effortlessly overruling the cute little mewls of her kits. You tug your eyes from him again and turn them to the sky. You feel the pull of your snakes, the dull impression of the world through their eyes. You used to live down South. You remember the hurricanes don't you? The way the world would vanish behind a solid wall of dirty white as the storm rushed to shore. Or at night when it just crept up on you like a blue-silver beast. Curtains drawn across the waves; graceful and gauzy even as they sped at you with all the force of an eighteen wheeler.
You're not moving. He's getting away.
You can see them can't you? Out there in the water, their heads bobbing up and down, a couple hundred feet from shore. How many, eight? No no, there's that inflamed, infected, throbbing in your head but you at least saw twelve, more than twelve. There must be others still down there and they're-
yours.
They didn't do anything wrong they don't fucking deserve to be here.
He's hauling the cab-door open. He's getting away.
It's not even a conscious thought, you just twist and throw it. Absently, reflexively, long, smooth, cords of muscle working flawlessly beneath your skin as you step into it. One arm sweeping down. The spear flies free from your grip, shimmering, hazed in black and glowing green. You see it leap through the air. You see it shift, changing course mid-flight.
And then you don't see anything because you crash to the sand again, screaming into the bloodstained, churned earth as every aching muscle in your body howls at once. Distantly, dimly, you hear him cry out. You know you winged him. But the car door still slams shut and the engine still rumbles to life and then just like that the moment's gone, the window closed, and the truck roars off into the night. You reach out again, breath coming in short, shallow, whimpering pants as a whole bucketful of knives is worked up under your ribs. The spear wobbles in the trench it blasted and then zooms out, a solid bar of green light shooting up into the rainy night. Etching sharp right angles through the air as it comes around and slides smoothly back into your grip. You plant it in the ground and use it to shakily push yourself up. You let him go and there's nothing you can do about it now, so just seize that anger again. Soak in it. Let it stew in you until your skin starts to boil off.
...Movement draws your eye, pulls it to the bands of colored mist peeling up and away. It takes you a second to realize what it is. What that prickle is, the march of a hundred ants up and down the arm that threw the spear. That's your Mask sloughing off, curling away like wafts of colored steam. You don't...you don't even know what you look like a person now. You didn't think to check. Do you even care? You have more important shit to do.
Stumble down to the water-line, leaning on -ophidia- the spear like it's a crutch. Waves crash against your knees, swirl around your shins and almost bowl you over, nearly drag you down. Release your grip, flex your fingers, you don't even have think to make the motion. In an instant the polearm collapses back into clouds and swirls around your arm. Tendrils breaking off, seeping through the skin as your body drinks it down. Your veins bulging, bloating black and green. You feel the queasy pressure inside you, the unnatural heat. But then you don't think about that either because you're wading further out. Pressing on until the water foams around your waist and you can dive in, plunging ahead into the murk and the dark. You have a job to do right?
You instantly regret every choice you've ever made.
Each stroke is agony. Your joints are filled with ground glass. Your tendons are dry string. Your body one enormous bruise. You can feel your pretty, tanned flesh tugging and pulling, the wounds covering your body stretching wide like so many mouths, red tongues trailing in the water. Drink down the anger. Tell yourself you won't let them go. Tell yourself you won't let them die. Tell yourself you can save them all. But it's different now, the poison just swirls around and around inside your head before draining out. You can't hold onto the raw, red, rage that let you strike, that let you kill her.
You press on anyway. Pushing through the churning currents, knifing through the stinging salt-water. You can't...can't leave them behind heh. There's no one stroke that you can justify giving up on. No definitive moment where you hit that immutable wall of "well I guess I'll give up now." Gradually it starts to get better, you remember to move your tail; the endless, grinding, drudge becomes more manageable.
Pass them by themselves, pass them in groups of two or three. An older man, his face a glossy black chitinous mask; antennae swaying in the water, mandibles working where his mouth should be. Carapace the color of ink, swirling with oil-slick rainbows and fused with his belly, his back. Jointed arthropodal legs almost as long as he's tall twitching behind him. A girl your age with scales the color of a fading bruise, body gilded in translucent fins. Her head narrow and inhuman, eel-like and predatory. Bone plates melded over vital parts like living armor. Bone collar curling around her throat, forking and framing her angular skull like a living halo. A huge, hulking figure, halfway between a lobster and a crocodile passing below you. Dark seaweed trailing from his skull. Scaled hands pressed to his side, plated pincers angled ahead. These ones don't need you, they're fine. You find the ones who do soon enough.
The kid flailing, panicked and splashing. Broad shouldered and collared but he's got to be younger than you. You drag him up, up to the surface, point him at shore, at the city-lights, and push. The woman, one arm hanging loose and useless, tail nearly touching her snout as she tries to curl up in pain; tow her to the shallows until she can walk on the ground. The man floating up on the waves, crab-legs curled up on his chest, staring numbly up at the storm-wracked sky. He doesn't even fight you as you haul him along. Swim out. Come back. Swim out. Come back. Do your best to keep everyone together as they start coming ashore. As they emerge staggering, stumbling, collapsing on the wet sand.
You swim out farther, your limbs shaking. Is that everyone? That has to be everyone. You can just see the blurry smudge where the seaweed bank floats and there's nobody else- wait. Wait there's two, two shapes herding the last of the stragglers. Helping them, just like you. One's a woman, another crocodilian thing. Arms thicker than your legs, legs thicker than your head, like she's stitched together out of slabs beneath the scales and scutes and segmented chitin. She has a black-masked body under each arm and a collared eel-faced woman clinging to her shoulders. The other's a man, finning through the water better than most. His collar more curved, more ornate, beak-like jaws parted as he pants. Another man braced on his back, a leaner, emaciated giant. "Beard" of black seaweed waving in the water.
Who do you help to shore? Who do you try and talk to?
[ ] The collared man in the sleek, organic armor.
[ ] The hulking woman with slabs of brutal muscle.
"I didn't say you could go." Your voice is soft, gentle, it'd almost be caring, almost be kind if it wasn't for the venom dripping, clear and caustic from your tongue. If your chest wasn't glistening with red, if your mouth wasn't caked in her blood. You know what to do, you know how this goes. Sand rasps and grinds as you roll back onto your knees, body drawn up upon itself, your eyes flickering, twitching beneath the long fringe of black hair. Darting from piece to piece, part to portion of the waxen man. His hands. His legs. His throat. His hands. His legs. His throat. His hands. His legs. His throat.
His flames starting to spit and sputter in the rain.
"What's the worst part of this Jack? Is it me or you? Better me, I think, than something else; I mean -heh- it wasn't easy but she went fast. But...oh Jack," and you draw it out into a tender sigh, breathing his name like he's your dearest friend, your closest confidant, pressing your other palm to your pectoral. His grey-green throat works as he swallows. "You wanted so badly to love her didn't you? And you did want her. You thought that would be enough."
Hold him pinned in place beneath the weight of your attention, the pressure of your gaze. A mouse hypnotized as the serpent slithers a little nearer, a little closer. Slowly, slowly, you work your arm free of the aching contortion. Worming it out from against your chest, reaching to the side. All the rest of you is trembling, cold adrenaline crashing into acid anger, setting your nerves all alight. But it's funny heh isn't it? Your hand's so steady.
"It's kinda amazing huh? After everything you're still not numb. There's still enough left inside to feel sick that you don't feel worse, to wonder why it doesn't hurt more. She should have been it right? 'Cause if not her then who?"
Push your nails into that fracture, work him wider as you test the slack, the give in the silver-lattice netting. Mercury white wires humming as you push down, brace yourself and push up until it starts to slice into you. The web wearing welts into your skin even as it distends and distort over your back. Rain beads on your scaled spine, dripping down the channels between your ribs. Your elbow clicks, your muscle aches. Fingers curl over something you can't see. Wrapping around empty air as cramps work beneath the skin.
"...Me~?" Silence. You smile, lips peeling back to show too many too-sharp teeth. "Isn't that a thought. If we're being honest I could probably make you forget all about her given a night or two. I have it on good authority I'm a pretty good-"
You falter, your words failing.
He's not looking at you. Why isn't he looking at you? Instead he's just staring at the empty space off to your side, the patch of nothing you're reaching out to, reaching in to. The spell slips, the serpent blinks; slow-curdling fury pops and, for a second, sizzles out. You...you can't remember what you were doing. Why you were doing it. You can taste it on the tip of your tongue, feel it on the edge of sensation; hanging there, fluttering. And in that second he surges to his feet and sprints away. Feet chewing up the shore, kicking up sprays of sand. You shout, lash out, and in that instant you rip it free from negative space. Tear it from the nothing.
ophidia
It's a hurricane in your hand. It's a thunderstorm in your fist. It doesn't materialize, it doesn't just appear, it shatters the world around it with a sound like breaking glass. Lightning crackling, crawling through the air as it sheds obsidian smoke and emerald embers. Vapor curling off in pale-grey ribbons as the last electric arcs die away. The spear glistens slickly, shining like polished black bone, like oil. Hungry veins the color of raw jade visibly pulsing, glowing, within. The leaf-shaped head lined in backswept barbs. You know what it wants. You know what it needs. Why wouldn't you when it fits your hand like it was made for it?
Jack's fallen, staring over his shoulder, eyes burning with panic even as he claws at the rise before him. You feel your temples pounding, the blood racing through your body. Your snakes spasm, contracting in, spreading out. The motions sudden, violent, as they work themselves up into a hissing, spitting, thicket of reptilian muscle.
You spin the spear once and the net comes undone. Splendid argent threads snapping, twanging like piano-wires. The lights burning out, leaving behind only ash and knotted twine. You stand on shaking legs, pushing yourself up with the butt of it; static whining in your aching head. Half the net is caught in your horns, wrapped in your twitching tail. Put the lance to your shoulder, sweep it out, and feel that snap too. Pull it from your crown. Swish your tail and sling the rest off. The rain is falling heavier now; but only around you, only lashing your back. The heavy pressure settling across your shoulders like a cloak. Your long, sculpted, scaled body dripping wet. The air reeks of ozone, verdant lightning flickering, flashing, around you. Jack's back up, he's running, he's only ten feet from the car. But you know you could catch even as frail as you are. You know if you stay angry you'll just glide up behind him, nice and easy, pin him down and ram the head through his fucking chest. And he'll fall, clawing at the door.
You're not moving. He's getting away.
Thunder booms overhead, drowning out the noise of your cloak; plucking at tattered, frayed threads of focus. A tigress effortlessly overruling the cute little mewls of her kits. You tug your eyes from him again and turn them to the sky. You feel the pull of your snakes, the dull impression of the world through their eyes. You used to live down South. You remember the hurricanes don't you? The way the world would vanish behind a solid wall of dirty white as the storm rushed to shore. Or at night when it just crept up on you like a blue-silver beast. Curtains drawn across the waves; graceful and gauzy even as they sped at you with all the force of an eighteen wheeler.
You're not moving. He's getting away.
You can see them can't you? Out there in the water, their heads bobbing up and down, a couple hundred feet from shore. How many, eight? No no, there's that inflamed, infected, throbbing in your head but you at least saw twelve, more than twelve. There must be others still down there and they're-
yours.
They didn't do anything wrong they don't fucking deserve to be here.
He's hauling the cab-door open. He's getting away.
It's not even a conscious thought, you just twist and throw it. Absently, reflexively, long, smooth, cords of muscle working flawlessly beneath your skin as you step into it. One arm sweeping down. The spear flies free from your grip, shimmering, hazed in black and glowing green. You see it leap through the air. You see it shift, changing course mid-flight.
And then you don't see anything because you crash to the sand again, screaming into the bloodstained, churned earth as every aching muscle in your body howls at once. Distantly, dimly, you hear him cry out. You know you winged him. But the car door still slams shut and the engine still rumbles to life and then just like that the moment's gone, the window closed, and the truck roars off into the night. You reach out again, breath coming in short, shallow, whimpering pants as a whole bucketful of knives is worked up under your ribs. The spear wobbles in the trench it blasted and then zooms out, a solid bar of green light shooting up into the rainy night. Etching sharp right angles through the air as it comes around and slides smoothly back into your grip. You plant it in the ground and use it to shakily push yourself up. You let him go and there's nothing you can do about it now, so just seize that anger again. Soak in it. Let it stew in you until your skin starts to boil off.
...Movement draws your eye, pulls it to the bands of colored mist peeling up and away. It takes you a second to realize what it is. What that prickle is, the march of a hundred ants up and down the arm that threw the spear. That's your Mask sloughing off, curling away like wafts of colored steam. You don't...you don't even know what you look like a person now. You didn't think to check. Do you even care? You have more important shit to do.
Stumble down to the water-line, leaning on -ophidia- the spear like it's a crutch. Waves crash against your knees, swirl around your shins and almost bowl you over, nearly drag you down. Release your grip, flex your fingers, you don't even have think to make the motion. In an instant the polearm collapses back into clouds and swirls around your arm. Tendrils breaking off, seeping through the skin as your body drinks it down. Your veins bulging, bloating black and green. You feel the queasy pressure inside you, the unnatural heat. But then you don't think about that either because you're wading further out. Pressing on until the water foams around your waist and you can dive in, plunging ahead into the murk and the dark. You have a job to do right?
You instantly regret every choice you've ever made.
Each stroke is agony. Your joints are filled with ground glass. Your tendons are dry string. Your body one enormous bruise. You can feel your pretty, tanned flesh tugging and pulling, the wounds covering your body stretching wide like so many mouths, red tongues trailing in the water. Drink down the anger. Tell yourself you won't let them go. Tell yourself you won't let them die. Tell yourself you can save them all. But it's different now, the poison just swirls around and around inside your head before draining out. You can't hold onto the raw, red, rage that let you strike, that let you kill her.
You press on anyway. Pushing through the churning currents, knifing through the stinging salt-water. You can't...can't leave them behind heh. There's no one stroke that you can justify giving up on. No definitive moment where you hit that immutable wall of "well I guess I'll give up now." Gradually it starts to get better, you remember to move your tail; the endless, grinding, drudge becomes more manageable.
Pass them by themselves, pass them in groups of two or three. An older man, his face a glossy black chitinous mask; antennae swaying in the water, mandibles working where his mouth should be. Carapace the color of ink, swirling with oil-slick rainbows and fused with his belly, his back. Jointed arthropodal legs almost as long as he's tall twitching behind him. A girl your age with scales the color of a fading bruise, body gilded in translucent fins. Her head narrow and inhuman, eel-like and predatory. Bone plates melded over vital parts like living armor. Bone collar curling around her throat, forking and framing her angular skull like a living halo. A huge, hulking figure, halfway between a lobster and a crocodile passing below you. Dark seaweed trailing from his skull. Scaled hands pressed to his side, plated pincers angled ahead. These ones don't need you, they're fine. You find the ones who do soon enough.
The kid flailing, panicked and splashing. Broad shouldered and collared but he's got to be younger than you. You drag him up, up to the surface, point him at shore, at the city-lights, and push. The woman, one arm hanging loose and useless, tail nearly touching her snout as she tries to curl up in pain; tow her to the shallows until she can walk on the ground. The man floating up on the waves, crab-legs curled up on his chest, staring numbly up at the storm-wracked sky. He doesn't even fight you as you haul him along. Swim out. Come back. Swim out. Come back. Do your best to keep everyone together as they start coming ashore. As they emerge staggering, stumbling, collapsing on the wet sand.
You swim out farther, your limbs shaking. Is that everyone? That has to be everyone. You can just see the blurry smudge where the seaweed bank floats and there's nobody else- wait. Wait there's two, two shapes herding the last of the stragglers. Helping them, just like you. One's a woman, another crocodilian thing. Arms thicker than your legs, legs thicker than your head, like she's stitched together out of slabs beneath the scales and scutes and segmented chitin. She has a black-masked body under each arm and a collared eel-faced woman clinging to her shoulders. The other's a man, finning through the water better than most. His collar more curved, more ornate, beak-like jaws parted as he pants. Another man braced on his back, a leaner, emaciated giant. "Beard" of black seaweed waving in the water.
Who do you help to shore? Who do you try and talk to?
[ ] The collared man in the sleek, organic armor.
[ ] The hulking woman with slabs of brutal muscle.
[X] The hulking woman with slabs of brutal muscle.
Omegahugger
Inattentive Idiot
Silly boy, this is why you don't play with your food before eating it.
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
ALRIGHTY LOTS TO UNPACK HERE
The way this is described and all, it really feels like... I don't know enough about Changeling to call it a 'contract' but this is something unnatural. Levi appears to have some actual, superhuman ability to be a dick to people, given the imagery of being a hypnotic snake, words as venom, all that good shit. And then once Jack gets distracted from that the spell breaks.
And oh look he has a Noble Phantasm.
Highlighting 'cause it's relevant for later.
But yeah seriously whoops, looks likeGae BolgOphidia is a thirsty boi and in Levi's current state, giving Jack that head-start essentially meant letting him go. Exactly as I predicted. I WILL REMEMBER THIS DAY WHEN JACK RETURNS WITH AN UZI OR SOMETHING.
So, another thing. These guys and gals are all aquatic. All of 'em fit the same aquatic theme as Levi. More specifically they seem to fit into two clearly demarked groups, one kinda workmanlike crustacean group - the masks implying some kind of anonymity or forced loss of identity - and the other of some sort of higher status. The collars imply their own form of servitude, but the halos imply status in that servitude. I mean to a certain extent these are just meant as descriptors for their respective Changeling mutations but those descriptions have meaning, Tenfold likes to paint him some pretty pictures and wotnot.
More importantly, that makes Levi the blatant outlier here. Seemingly the most human, a hydra rather than an eel or CRAB PEOPLE (taste like crab, look like people), horns, and a magic artifact spear that was clearly homing before he hit the dirt and was still able to Gae Bolg itano circus its way back into his hand despite his being bone dry on Glamour.
There are a lot of different pictures these pieces could fit together to form and none of them are good news.
(albeit I recall that part of passing through the Hedge is having pieces of your form ripped all to shit - i.e. a wolfman could have been a wolfman or could've been a 'Bigby Wolf Release Restraint Level 0 20-foot-paw-to-shoulder Dire Wolf motherfucker' - so who the fuck knows what these people actually looked like back in Arcadia
ANYWAY LET'S MAKE SOME FRIENDS GO TEAM
[X] The collared man in the sleek, organic armor.
Disregard the poors, acquire man of status.
The way this is described and all, it really feels like... I don't know enough about Changeling to call it a 'contract' but this is something unnatural. Levi appears to have some actual, superhuman ability to be a dick to people, given the imagery of being a hypnotic snake, words as venom, all that good shit. And then once Jack gets distracted from that the spell breaks.
And oh look he has a Noble Phantasm.
Highlighting 'cause it's relevant for later.
This is what you get for unleashing your Noble Phantasm without enough magical energy!
But yeah seriously whoops, looks like
So, another thing. These guys and gals are all aquatic. All of 'em fit the same aquatic theme as Levi. More specifically they seem to fit into two clearly demarked groups, one kinda workmanlike crustacean group - the masks implying some kind of anonymity or forced loss of identity - and the other of some sort of higher status. The collars imply their own form of servitude, but the halos imply status in that servitude. I mean to a certain extent these are just meant as descriptors for their respective Changeling mutations but those descriptions have meaning, Tenfold likes to paint him some pretty pictures and wotnot.
More importantly, that makes Levi the blatant outlier here. Seemingly the most human, a hydra rather than an eel or CRAB PEOPLE (taste like crab, look like people), horns, and a magic artifact spear that was clearly homing before he hit the dirt and was still able to Gae Bolg itano circus its way back into his hand despite his being bone dry on Glamour.
There are a lot of different pictures these pieces could fit together to form and none of them are good news.
(albeit I recall that part of passing through the Hedge is having pieces of your form ripped all to shit - i.e. a wolfman could have been a wolfman or could've been a 'Bigby Wolf Release Restraint Level 0 20-foot-paw-to-shoulder Dire Wolf motherfucker' - so who the fuck knows what these people actually looked like back in Arcadia
ANYWAY LET'S MAKE SOME FRIENDS GO TEAM
[X] The collared man in the sleek, organic armor.
Disregard the poors, acquire man of status.
Omegahugger
Inattentive Idiot
The woman is described as crocodilian, the man has a beak.
[X] The hulking woman with slabs of brutal muscle.
Clearly there's only one option.
[X] The hulking woman with slabs of brutal muscle.
Clearly there's only one option.
LaRed
Are you stupid or something
- Location
- Mou Ikkai hell
Well I'm sold
[X] The hulking woman with slabs of brutal muscle.
- Location
- Nowhere
It looks like one can't escape from sodomy in Ten's Quests.
Even a Changeling character starts with a major advantage with Ten stories.
Heh, as expected, ranged weapons can't be dodged. See now?
Welp, that's probably feeling all of the exhaustion right at once. Also, even his Mask is breaking down. Being seen by humies will be a bad thing right now.
IIRC there is at least one Contract that lets you know about a target's fears, but that looks quite advanced. No idea if it's the remains of the power-up needed to escape Arcadia, or what else.
Actually, it should be possible to start a NChangeling game with a magical weapon or even an artifact, but these things in that game tend to have "interesting" side-effects.
It's okay, there's one Contract that turns the user into an intangible being, so bullets won't hurt us by then. Unless that's an enchanted uzi, which I would call it bullshit then.
It also shows that the local Changeling community may not be really good at their jobs if such high-profile break-out was completely missed by non-hostile parties. In one hand, it makes sense that those escaping The Funny Place by water are water-themed, but jesus, they are really ugly in most cases. Fairests won't be showing up a lot here.
On the other hand...
To the contrary, that makes him more inhuman IMO, considering his
IIRC it was stated that those that had lost too much humanity and changed way too much could not leave Arcadia anymore, but that's probably a retcon from the last sourcebook to make the game more grimderp. No idea if Changeling 2.0 is out and if Ten will use elements from it.
Seeing NWoD Demons would be a fun experience though, if a completely brain-melting one.
[x] The hulking woman with slabs of brutal muscle.
If only so that we have a Ten character who's straight for once.
LupineVolt
Now with 200% more Puns
- Location
- Michigan
[X] The collared man in the sleek, organic armor.
If my sole function on this forum is to balance out people who want to fuck crocodile women then so be it.
(Pst, this isn't a flat out romance oprion yah wierdos)
If my sole function on this forum is to balance out people who want to fuck crocodile women then so be it.
(Pst, this isn't a flat out romance oprion yah wierdos)