[X] Tip of the Spear...with no survivors: Send one person out and ahead, while trying to take out the rest of the boiler room as well. Double the trouble, but it does mean that if neither plan goes wrong, returning to give information and plan the next move will go a little smoother.
-[X] Gabe: She might actually be able to make sense of things if there's any magic or traps or tricks specific to this new world and not their former one.
-[X] Focus on shock and awe with the boiler room, go in fast and try not to let anyone do a runner.
[X] Tip of the spear: Send one person out, to examine what's up there and see where they should go. See if they can figure out a next move and then return to report on it.
-[X] One of the agents. They're clever, sneaky, and, being honest here, more expendable than their King if this all turns out to be a horrible trap.
[X] Tip of the spear: Send one person out, to examine what's up there and see where they should go. See if they can figure out a next move and then return to report on it.
-[X] One of the agents. They're clever, sneaky, and, being honest here, more expendable than their King if this all turns out to be a horrible trap.
He's the Warden over Chicago. As noted by his constant hounding of Dresden. It'd be less monomaniacal and more 'He's literally neglecting his job' if he was actually in charge of some distant area and still spent all of his time searching for health code, I mean Laws of Magic, violations from Harry.
And since St. Louis is literally half a state over...well, I mean, it's 200 miles, but all things considered, since Harry Dresden himself was only 'in charge of', like, a few Wardens when he was given charge of things, I'm thinking that in America (being less important than Europe because the WhC is a bunch of snobs), there's not one for every State. Hence, Morgan it is.
I'm sure this fills you with optimism that those in charge will understand the spirit of the Law and totally forgive people violating the Laws of Magic because it doesn't *really* hurt people, they swear. For real this time.
I'm sure this fills you with optimism that those in charge will understand the spirit of the Law and totally forgive people violating the Laws of Magic because it doesn't *really* hurt people, they swear. For real this time.
On the other hand, Morgan is experienced enough to practical about picking fights and to be aware that most semi-humans don't rewire their brains when casting magic.
On the other hand, Morgan is experienced enough to practical about picking fights and to be aware that most semi-humans don't rewire their brains when casting magic.
He is also paranoid for very good reasons and believes they can't hurt innocents if they are dead.
He is practical about picking fights, but he is also old enough that he's not shy about picking a fight, because he's prepared for a LOT of things. Including that one Skinwalker.
[X] Tip of the spear: Send one person out, to examine what's up there and see where they should go. See if they can figure out a next move and then return to report on it.
-[X] One of the agents. They're clever, sneaky, and, being honest here, more expendable than their King if this all turns out to be a horrible trap.
He's the Warden over Chicago. As noted by his constant hounding of Dresden. It'd be less monomaniacal and more 'He's literally neglecting his job' if he was actually in charge of some distant area and still spent all of his time searching for health code, I mean Laws of Magic, violations from Harry.
And since St. Louis is literally half a state over...well, I mean, it's 200 miles, but all things considered, since Harry Dresden himself was only 'in charge of', like, a few Wardens when he was given charge of things, I'm thinking that in America (being less important than Europe because the WhC is a bunch of snobs), there's not one for every State. Hence, Morgan it is.
I'm sure this fills you with optimism that those in charge will understand the spirit of the Law and totally forgive people violating the Laws of Magic because it doesn't *really* hurt people, they swear. For real this time.
I just got literally the stupidest idea for a fic I've ever gotten. Ever.
No!Magic!Verse. Harry Dresden is an entreprenuer who runs, say, a Hot-dog stand/catering business or something.
Morgan is a health code inspector who keeps on getting on his ass.
Michael Carpenter is someone who wants to hire him to cater for an important church event.
Molly is the daughter who gets a crush on the guy who keeps on coming around to ask about tarts.
Murphs is the beat-cop that gives him hints about problems.
Together, he accidentally fights crime and gets into sleuthing mysteries.
Bob's actually literally just a skull he stole from a Shakespeare production once. But he holds it up and acts like a dork when he's thinking through tough problems.
[X] Tip of the spear: Send one person out, to examine what's up there and see where they should go. See if they can figure out a next move and then return to report on it.
-[X] One of the agents. They're clever, sneaky, and, being honest here, more expendable than their King if this all turns out to be a horrible trap.
[X] Tip of the spear: Send one person out, to examine what's up there and see where they should go. See if they can figure out a next move and then return to report on it.
-[X] One of the agents. They're clever, sneaky, and, being honest here, more expendable than their King if this all turns out to be a horrible trap.
Vote tally: ##### 3.21
[X] Tip of the spear: Send one person out, to examine what's up there and see where they should go. See if they can figure out a next move and then return to report on it.
-[X] One of the agents. They're clever, sneaky, and, being honest here, more expendable than their King if this all turns out to be a horrible trap. No. of votes: 6 veekie, silentspirals, Sweece, Neptune, Captain Hunt, wingstrike96
[X] Tip of the Spear...with no survivors: Send one person out and ahead, while trying to take out the rest of the boiler room as well. Double the trouble, but it does mean that if neither plan goes wrong, returning to give information and plan the next move will go a little smoother.
-[X] Gabe: She might actually be able to make sense of things if there's any magic or traps or tricks specific to this new world and not their former one.
-[X] Focus on shock and awe with the boiler room, go in fast and try not to let anyone do a runner. No. of votes: 1 NemoMarx
[X] Tip of the spear: Send one person out, to examine what's up there and see where they should go. See if they can figure out a next move and then return to report on it.
-[X] One of the agents. They're clever, sneaky, and, being honest here, more expendable than their King if this all turns out to be a horrible trap.
Some people called her Mrs. White. She usually responded that not only was she not married, but she did not appreciate the joke. They tended to apologize at that point, and she tended to smile in a way that made people think she didn't have a sense of humor. In fact, Abigail Whitmore did have a sense of humor. She would pay a good deal of money if someone could just nip over to Arcadia and then start looking around.
They just had to take a left at the nearest mountain, and then keep on going down, and then down some more, until they came across the Prismatic Mines, where slaves labored to draw out jewels so colorful and beautiful they leeched the color from a person's skin within a year.
Down there the air was bad, and most workers died within a year. They kept track, actually, and the warrens where they kept the workers were cramped and miserable, but at the head of each small cot was a plaque that changed itself. It said how many days they owner of the bed had survived, and once they died, someone else took their place.
There was no way everyone there was human, none at all, but considering the goblins too were warped, there was a certain kinship.
In the cramped warrens there was a prison kinship, and that meant violence and hate. That meant being pushed up against the walls and struggling for every breath. It meant fighting and fucking just to feel something or for a scrap of bread or for anything at all. It meant hating the overseers and rioting whenever one could. It meant fighting for pieces of gem.
Poison was the only currency down there, for the very gems they sought destroyed them. But there was a quota, and if you didn't meet it, you were beaten.
Down there, she had not lost her sense of humor, not that easily. Not after the McCready gang jumped her and beat her half to death and then did other things…
Not when she got back by murdering two of their members and dumping their bodies down a mineshaft.
She'd maintained hope an an even keel through four years, until she was the longest living slave down there, led prison riots and tried time and again to escape.
It was three days before she left that she lost her sense of humor. There was a cave in, and she and her mates were trapped. Always they were in the verge of death, for they were fed barely enough to live. There were five people there. One of them went mad from the crystals and fear and tried to kill the others. Another tried to dig through the back and was never seen again. So they sat there. Her, two others, and a corpse.
Bleached white, eyes sickly and mad. Terrified, even at the end. She knew if she closed her eyes, she'd wake up somewhere else. That's the feeling she had. That she should just give up. Hennie had been a good woman, a decent sort, delicate and, Abigail had suspected, human. Barely a hundred days old down here, and while her skin had bleached fast, that meant nothing.
She'd been supposed to protect people. She was the longest living slave, that was her job. She stroked the girl's pretty hair, which still hadn't fallen out, as it tended to do. She was bald as an egg, and it'd be a year on the outside before she grew a head of hair, and even now it was barely enough.
Also what was barely enough? The air. She felt herself choking. By the end of the first day, they were low on air, and so they dug at the rock, trying to find an air hole. And they were starving. So one of her mates, a big guy, said that maybe they needed...something to eat.
And Isis, the mystic of the group, versed in the lore of the gems, agreed.
Abigail hadn't. So she'd watched as half of Hennie was torn up. It was enough for a day, and Abigail stayed awake despite it all. The rocks were her companions now, for the other two...how could they? It was Hennie.
Hennie.
Then they'd started fighting. They saw her as all but dead, and they were right. The smaller one killed the larger one, accused him of stealing air with his big breaths, and then began digging desperately until he actually found an airhole. A small one. Then it was just the two of them.
Did she attack him? Did he attack her? All she remembered was that by the end of the second day he was dead, and she'd killed him. The hunger had turned her stomach into a hollow drum, and finally she crawled over to Hennie and…
That's where her sense of humor was. A stain in the rocks down a particular mineshaft.
Someone had come at the end of the third day, and they'd dragged her back to the warrens. But at the end, at the very end, she'd dreamed that she could breathe in smoke…
And when she'd led the uprising to try to escape, and been the only one to make it…
She'd been trying to die, but she had failed, and at the last moment she'd found herself running on the very walls. She'd escaped, but she knew, or suspected, or felt deep down that when she died she would be back there, down in that mineshaft, throat scorched with hunger and belly a frozen wasteland. Dying and nothing more to eat than human flesh.
Dante and every authority had said as much, that punishment and crime will repeat each other in rhyme.
So, she took a breath and remembered the darkness, and knew that her Monarch's orders should be obeyed, even if she didn't feel all that comfortable, to say the least, in the presence of this 'Wizard'. She was not trustworthy by her very nature, for she'd known those who dabbled at magic who were not Changelings before, and to say that they were cruel was to be too polite to the vast lot of them. Cruel and petty and dangerous.
Still, she knew what to do, and the first step was to take to the skies. Or at least, not try to walk through the narrow catwalks like an idiot, where all it took was one person going down it and she was trapped and soon to be seen. So she leapt off, in a single smooth motion, as Gabe barely held in a gasp as she hit a boiler, as gently as possible, and began to crawl along it, crouched on all fours, before leaping off onto a far catwalk and running down the bottom of it, trying to make as little noise as possible.
The key was not to stay in one place too long, and to swing around like...that.
And then walk, slowly, crouched, over that catwalk and then drop down.
And there it was, the door. That wasn't hard at all, she thought, carefully testing it in case there was an alarm, opening it and slipping through into...well, Huck Finn's high-class nighmare.
She was something of an authority on obscure information like this, but the decor, the paintings on the wall, the really ugly carpet. It all looked like mid-century Victorian if it was interpreted by, say, a riverboat baron from America with no taste. The colors didn't quite work, the artwork actually repeated itself as if it were a video game, and the red uniform of the 'bellboy' patrolling just ahead of her didn't match the green carpet at all.
It was positively hideous. She remembered that the Fiddler, and his first myth, went back to the 19th century, and it showed.
Her best guess was that that had something to do with it, but she wasn't sure how it would help her. For the moment, she breathed in until her lungs were screaming and let the smoke fill it. The smoke made her feel dark, and cold, it brought her back to where she was before.
She hated using the Contract of Smoke, but she needed a little invisibility while she slipped...that way. And then up the wall and around, making sure not to knock over the painting. Up ahead she heard laughter, and a man stepped out from a door.
He wore a red beret, and his features were fine, but a little gaunt. Not as pale as her, but close. His dark eyes were laughing with some cruel mirth, and at his sides was a woman in a green dress.
"Really, this place is not all it is cracked up to be," a third voice said. "This...demonstration had better be all we're looking for."
"Patience," the man in the red beret said, "What else do we have for amusement?"
"We could swim the rivers and drown a few," the woman said, "I still don't see how this will get me any closer to--"
"Always Greenteeth," a fourth voice rumbled, male but barely human sounding. Though Abigail had a feeling none of them were precisely human. "We. Get. It. You hate her. Now, come in. The host should be here in a little to try to convince us of...stuff."
"Yes, quite. Stuff. Stuff and babble," the man in the red beret said.
Abigail glanced at the passageway. One way led left, and probably was aimed towards, perhaps, crew decks or passenger areas. Another led to a stairway, and might be the way to get to the deck. And of course, she could try to see just what was going on in that room.
Or she could turn back, decide that this was enough, and try and see what the next move us.
Where to go? (Choose 1)
[] Cabins.
[] Deck.
[] Meeting Room.
[] Back.
-[] Once back, what's Stonegut's next move?
*****
Scuttling Spider: 2 sux.
Glamour 11/12.
Stealth: 6 dice, 9 again=3 sux vs. 2
It's Called Parkour: 5 dice, 9 again=4 sux
Thank you for smoking: 2 sux
Glamour: 9/12
Stealth: 6 dice+3 (Smoking)+1 (Inattentive)=5 sux vs. 0
A/N: Here you go. Sorry for the backstory, but I figured it'd be the best way to help keep my mood up and I wanted to help create a distinct personality for someone who hasn't even had a single line of dialogue yet.
So, I hope I succeeded.
I also hope it wasn't too intense, but yeah, Durance sucks. Sometimes in less visceral ways, but the idea came to me and so I ran with it.
[X] Meeting Room.
This is probably the most risky choice, but it sounds like the Fiddler's going to be laying out a censored version of his political maneuvering from first principles. As we have little idea of his aims, abilities or methods, that would be really valuable.
Also, that this seems to be a variant on a cruise ship confirms that the engine room is probably a vital-ish system, rather than decorative.
"We could swim the rivers and drown a few," the woman said, "I still don't see how this will get me any closer to--"
"Always Greenteeth," a fourth voice rumbled, male but barely human sounding. Though Abigail had a feeling none of them were precisely human. "We. Get. It. You hate her. Now, come in. The host should be here in a little to try to convince us of...stuff."
The draw of the others, in case you're wondering: up deck allows you to try to figure out what's going on, and if Jonathan is being held here, then it'd probably be somewhere like down that hall where the crew and cabins are, unless she's trussed up in a closet somewhere.
Ever.
