Pyros's Rise of Legends Homebrew (Inactive)

Game Master waiph

"Boys! Boys! Just shut the hell up and listen! No one is asking your opinion right now, there will be time for it after we clear this damned hole - Alastair, keep those heals coming towards us - I am counting on you to keep us up and running for as long as needed, just make an extra prayer to your God this morning or whatever... Jules, I am still waiting on that intel for their setup - instead of going on with the blabbering, get your unseenness going and get movin! Lucian, I want to be fighting on OUR terms, so bring on your pits, flames or whatever you need to bring, just keep it UNDER CONTROL. The rest of you boys and girls, stay tight on my hairy arse as ticks - MOVE OUT!"

He had been there before - another hole, another humanoid tribe robbing, pillaging, and overall being nasty - nothing different, nothing unusual. The Captain is still in diapers, so it has to be him leading them in, clean up the place, and Team Badger wins the day. The Cap. can collect the honors and... Buy some more diapers I guess...

It matters not, he is there for his share and his boys - they trust him and he knows he can take them where they need to go.

"Godamn! What the hell are you doing Lucian?! Do you not see that goblin roller making short work of our left flank?! Stay sharp or I will be the one rolling over you, you bony excuse for a wizard - stay SHARP!"

He usually kept to himself, but they knew he would be the first to step up for the hardest of things when you are in the heat - decisions. No point in waiting for the Captain, too tied up in pleasing the Commander and making "strategic" decisions - when the s*** hits the fan, there is no time to ponder relations with the neighbouring kingdom, or the Lady and kids waiting back home - you need to let go, evaluate the here and now and MOVE. Stop, and you are dead.

That is why the boys and girls in Badger company turn to him - bottom line, no decision is MUCH worse than a bad decision.

Releasing his sword, previously stuck on a particularly hard hobgoblin head, he smiled at how far they had come since he was put in charge of the rag tag team - "The badgers lack Discipline!" - The Cap. would shout at him over and over again, but that was the whole beauty of it. Sure enough they were as heterogeneous as it gets, but everyone contributed to the whole, and they all knew and accepted their place - "We get the job done!" - was his most common retort, which however simple it may be, was the pure and clean truth.

It was raining hard that day - the Badgers soaked and pissed kept gnawing at his heels - "Makes no sense to invade a spookers hole under this weather - the traps will be harder to spot and disarm, visibility is reduced to crap, and we still need to manage the approach without losing half the men!" - Lucian shouted in his face - the wizard was much more than a friend after two years service in the wilds, but he was starting to grate on his nerves - "Look Lucian, I agree with every single piece of crap you are throwing my way - but we ARE going in - Badger company gets the job done, and this needs to be done. Damn! Was I the only one listening when the crying girl recounted how these bastards tore up her family?! We are doing this!"

Lucian just nodded as he usually did when Reknar suddenly got into altruistic mode - some things simply tickled him the wrong way, and he already knew there was no arguing against it - they would invade and clear out the goblin hole, as always.

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"Hard work, that's how things get done" - it seemed those words had echoed in his head forever, initially associated to the image of his father toiling away in the fields with him in tow - he seemed gigantic, bigger and stronger than life as he pushed and urged the family horse - Underdog - ever forward, ploughing the land, year after year. He was too young yet, too naive to understand that life is so much more complex than that - that the bruises and pained look on his mothers' face were anything besides bad luck of having bumped again against the damned door.

He grew up on this sun shining father figure that meant everything to the boy - ignorance never being so much blissful as it was in his own world, but no one stays young forever...

The sickening crunching sound felt disgustingly rewarding as his fist hit the man’s face once, and again, and again - "You dare?!" - came the retaliation amidst spitted blood and teeth.
In the background a woman’s' scream he could not quite place or recognize among the haze of anger - again and again he hit and got hit - "Hard work!" - his mind shouted at him every time he bordered on the edges of consciousness, so he shook the sweet good night away and pressed on - the man was huge, strong as an ox and even more furious, but he was determined - it would end today.

"DEAD!" - the word pierced the haze, making him pause and ponder - he knew the voice and knew the word, but he was unaware of the conjuncture until he noticed his bloody knuckles and the, by now unrecognizable, face he had been pounding into oblivion - "Hard work..."

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"Prison is not easy fellas, but then again, what is in this life?" - he would sometimes recount to Badger company around a fire and a hearty meal - "It gets you doing things that you never thought possible - you either toughen up or you die on the spot. And don't believe any stories that you always find someone honourable inside, willing to give you a hand - that is plain and simple bull****. You need to fend for yourself or suck it up when you can't, but above anything else, it is all about surviving, living to eat the damned gruel another day, and face a threat at lunch time - I learned a lot though"

After murdering his father, Reknar was quickly and summarily condemned to incarceration, spending most of his juvenile years in prison - the boy was broken when he entered that place, and callous when he left - the opportunity presented itself as it usually did every couple of years - anyone willing to serve in the army got their sentence commuted by 2 years for each one served - he grabbed it with two hands and crawled out of the hellhole.

The military weren't much better, ex-convicts being considered 2nd class soldiers, treated almost as poorly as they were in prison, shoddily geared, thrown at the worst of assignments, commanded by the less able of the officers - no one cared about body count amongst Jailites, they were there as fodder. Instead of fighting it, Reknar embraced it - amongst the rabble he found variety - anyone can end up in jail, so he met with the most different walks of life possible, and he soaked it all in - he learned discipline from Riktor, an old grizzled veteran of war who had taken down his commanding officer after he had sent them to be massacred on a tactical death-trap, with Janice the dual wielding dagger hired assassin to be, he learned passion and to speak before swinging his blade...

He met countless, befriended some, and watched most of them die on the field.

"Hah! Honourable death you say?! Come on... Nothing honourable about dying lad, and by the way, you say you will meet your God in the Seven Heavens heh? Well, show me someone that has seen them, and if it is half as wonderful as you are painting it, I'll slit my own throat just to get there. In the meantime, just keep your wits about you and stay ALIVE. As for death, and if you really must pray for anything at all, pray that yours is a quick and painless one"

Through grit and blood he climbed the ranks - proved himself and his Badger Company able and willing, but it was for naught as he came to understand - even after his 2 years of service were completed things did not improve - others still looked at him and his boys and girls like "Jailites", they kept throwing them into the deepest of possible mess, and his commanding officer was still an incompetent jerk. Curiously enough, that was perhaps the only time in his life that he felt some sort of sense of duty - towards those that looked at him for leadership, encouragement, and above all those “oh so dreaded” decisions.

By then he was free to leave, but he chose not to - at a certain point, and after a particularly messy affair at the Drecchard Bog, he was even offered another command, not a jailite team this time, but real soldiers - he refused without a second thought, and returned to his soggy and filthy barracks to down a couple of watered ales with the Badgers.

He was already two years into service, and never made it past sergeant - "When a troll comes wailing at you, it really doesn't matter how many stripes you have on your shoulder, or how many plumes you have on your helmet now does it?" - it mattered not, he was being quite successful at keeping the Badger company up and running, casualties to a minimum, and a high rate of success - so much so that it made a lot of high ranked officers feel awkward, and that is never good.

The Badgers operated smoothly - roles were well defined and the hierarchy well taken in - listen to the Sargent, ignore the Captain - simple. But nothing could have prepared them for that day - "With your permission SIR, you have got to be kidding me - you want me to take the whole company into a g*@ d#*ned crypt, with confirmed hauntings and whatnot reported, as is?! Sir, we are ill-equipped to deal with any sort of undead menace - as I reported over six months ago at the Tellis MESS, we have received none of the blanches requested, Tulion has been refused his robes because the church believes his work here is a waste of resources, and Lucian tells me that the reports so far are an understatement of what can be found in there - the undead concentration points to something else in there... And we are supposed to get in the hole, and clean it up?!"

He didn't have to hear the answer to know what it was. As he left the tent, his two corporals waiting outside needed no questions - Reknars' grim face was enough - "This is going to hurt"

He hasn't shared any of what actually happened in the infested crypt with anyone since that day - the surviving members of the Badger company emerged three days later - covered in blood, Reknar carried Tulion on his arms - his body showing evidence of desiccation, barely a husk of skin and bones, Lucian followed them, his left arm swollen and festering with some sort of unholy sickness, one of his eyes gouged out, barely walking.

Around his chest, the sergeant bore a harness, connected via improvised ropes to a pall, where three others laid, their sunken eyes dark, their mouths locked into a perpetual, silent scream. Without a word the three wounded were delivered to the infirmary - the physicians shaking their heads, lost at what to do. Reknar kept on, crossing the barracks, and wading right into the chapel that served the military quarters, striding in before appalled eyes he deposited his priest companion body on the altar, turning to the priests to one side with a sneer - "There's your martyr - I'm sure you will praise his deeds - remember to say to everyone that he died screaming"

He did not murder the captain, did not even address him - even though he would never forget the Krastigan name, he was irrelevant after all… As a man, and as a commander - he just took the blood soaked pall from his back, and without missing a step, both him and Lucian gathered their gear and left the quarters that same day, still bloodied and wounded.

"Sense of Duty... It has a nice sound to it does it not? Seems to roll off the tongue... But that is all there is to it - a nice sound"

Rosalyn had just flowed up to the rigging, The night was coming, her vision now in black and whites. As she landed next to the crows-nest the Crew-woman there looked at her. She shock her head at Rosalyn.

"Still now sign of wind then"

Rosalyn now looked around as well, nothing but still clear sky all around. She looked down at the deck below, others where on deck, no doubt thinking the same as her.

Well we'er going nowhere for the time being.

She jumped off the rigging and flow slowly back down to the deck. Landing in a clear area, but close to some others. Her wings folded up into her back and where once more out of sight. She pressed down her Armour, brushing off some imagined dust. Her flame read hair, copper tone skin, vivid amber eyes, Standing some six and a half feet all but yet willow thin with wings of Iridescent metallic light. O no mistake her race, plans touched, from the higher plans. She had left her spear in her cabin, but had her Springbow tried to her right leg and her two long daggers in her boots. Not that they would be needed, the Captain seas the seas around here where safe. So nothing to worry about but the lack of wind. She looked over at the others, she had seen some, but now it was time to say hello.

She smiled at them to see who was talkative.

He returns the smile, his pristine dental work shines through, though the points and jagged edges remind viewers that they still look upon a ratfolk.He returns to his drink slighty flustered by the presence of not only a divine being, but also the divine grace she radiates.He tugs his hood over his head again, rather self-consious of his appearance

Well the wind had picked up and by the morning they had spotted the Island, Akarine's island home. Its had not taken them long to dock, now they where disembarking and waiting for someone to come along and tell them where to go.

Rosalyn had walked down the boarding plank to the group collecting below.
Unlike the others she carried no back pack, just her fine red Armour, weapons and belt pouches. She looked at the others.

The hooded one form the night before.

He sticks out a hand, wrapped in a fingerless glove to greet the lady
"pardon me, I believe we haven't spoken to each other. My name is victor. you'll have to excuse me from looking..."

Victor threads his tail and lifts the hood off his face, revealing the visage of a black rat.

"a little ratty."

Victor chuckles at his own joke.

"pleased to be of acquaintance"

Holding her long spear in one hand, she takes his in the other and shakes it, there is strength in the shake, odd given her light willow-esk form.

"and likewise victor, I'm pleased to make your acquaintance as well. I'm the Lady Rosalyn Aanya Luminuss but please call me Rosalyn and don't worry about your looks. You know some think mine even odder."

She smiles, She has an easy way about her, conference but not foolish, friendly but not foolishly so.

"We live in a world full wonder victor and the look of others is all part of that. Well I must say by the looks of you, your a long way from the warren, what brings a fine fellow like you here?'

Walking down the gangplank a hooded figure inured in a sharp, jet black dyed traveler's outfit and backpack descends to dry land once again. Emerald green scarf wafting pleasantly in the sea breeze. The heels of his boots positively clicking with joy. Pulling back his hood revealing his drowish nature, he smiles.

Ah, freedom at last!

Well not quite full Drow. The stark white dreads is normal, sans the single emerald dread. The deep dusky purple is normal, except when he takes a few more steps into port. His skin blends into an ebon black in the shadows, as if they were trying to embrace him. Then his well trimmed beard and pupil-less emerald green eyes, mark him as something truly strange. A Half Drow.

How to start this new chapter of my life? A new cover I guess, can't be letting go of old habits. They are so very useful

As he takes in his surroundings, his emerald highlights dissipate as the prestidigitation ends. His hair all white, while his eyes and scarf return to their natural vibrant violet. He spies the conversing friendly (is that a giantess) assaimar and the chuckling ratfolk (Always fussing those folks). He laughs at the dichotomy of the large fire-headed female and tiny mouser. Brightlanders, always so odd. Well, something "shiny" new and something "fuzzy" familiar, a fine place to start.

He strolls up to the pair and introduces himself with courteous bow. Greetings fellow travelers, are you also new to this island. I must admit I'm a stranger in a strange land, and could use your assistance. My name is Somar.

Rosalyn eyes the new comer with some surprise.
Drow? Human? Some thing new and wonderful

"Well meet Somer, I'm the Lady Rosalyn Aanya Luminuss but please call me Rosalyn and if it's not being to rude may I ask your race?"

You spot with ease that Rosalyn's armour is made of Silkweave, made to be very light and flexible.

She's not telling the truth, that was deliberate.

"Next time I will try and get it right."

The acrid stench of sulfur and musk hung heavy in the air, stinging Akarine's nose. The white haired woman sniffled and rubbed at her watering eyes with the back of a hand before muttering a long string of swears just below her breath as she leaned against the door frame - the alchemist had seemed to take his sweet time to find her payment as he rummaged about the back room with a series of clatters, clanks, and cracks. With a sigh Akarine brushed across the front of her heavy breastplate, thumbing at a smudge of dirt.

She had been working as a courier for nearly a month now at the port in Cyrene to earn a meager keep. The room and board she could afford was of a higher quality she was accustomed to in the army but that was not saying much. A gold here, a handful of silvers there, it was enough to keep in good company and good enough spirits while saving to earn a ticket off the island (eventually); she had left the temple to strike out for adventure and landed herself in the army before leaving to look for more, but outside a few street scuffles and a flirty few winks with serving girls there was little to engage her.

Finally the wizened merchant had returned from the storeroom with a toothless grin to hand her a small purse and a slender few phials of a murky green liquid along with a quick few nods. Akarine returned the gesture after counting out the coin in the palm of her hand and storing the glass tubes in slots along her bandolier before stepping back into the streets with another drawn-out sigh. The Headstrong Hound seemed like a poor tavern to go to for the evening, but it was about all she could afford at that juncture.