Chloé Marthaler's page

Sooo... game dead?

"Our job is clear: We need to track down this Fornjot Power Associates and put an end to their plans! The presence of giants and creatures in the world is a clear sign that wickedness is afoot. Like true sons and daughters of the Aesir and Vanir we must rise to our calling. We can't let the Heart of Winter fall into the hands of creatures who would try to bring about the end of the world, and we'll fight to find them and stop them!"

Speechifying seems to be Chloé's strong point, though she is an actress. She raises her sword in the air as she finishes her speech, then brings it down in an arc to punctuate her sentence.

She turns, red hair swinging with the motion, to Chase. "We need to find out where Fornjot Power Associates has operations near here. They must've made some arrangements to get that giant into Bodie."

Then she faces Dustin and Ulfr. "And we need to be ready to fight giants. Think you're up to the task of whipping a rag-tag band of newly-pledged heroes into shape?"

At last she turns her head to Erika. "And of course we need to think about how we're going to wage this war. Because it's a war against the giants and the plans of whoever set this in motion, and that means we have to marshal forces to our side and prepare for alliances and compacts."

Charisma + Presence: 8d10 ⇒ (7, 8, 9, 10, 7, 4, 10, 8) = 63 -> 7 successes + 2 auto

Chloé nods in agreement. "You might as well - Ixion didn't work out for you; you have nothing to lose now."

"Let me give that some thought," says Chloé to the horseman. She peels back for a moment to find Erika.

"So, Erika, this is really in your court now," she opens. "Jurisprudence, that is. I feel like the horseman wound up on the wrong side, but that doesn't excuse his bad acts. This isn't the sort of thing where we can just lock him up in a jail, though. And... if uh, some kind of badness is really coming, we could use all the supernatural allies we can get... but I'm not sure if that's a good idea, or even the best way to go about this. What do you think?"

"And after all the terrible things that the world did to you, well, it seems only fitting that you are one of the terrible things, right? It feels like everything that happened just underscores that you are a monster. So you felt that if you're a monster, you might as well really be a monster," says Chloé sympathetically.

"Some of us got amazing powers and great heritages... and you got to be left out in the cold. It's not fair and it's not right."

Impulsively, she hugs Schmitty.

"Just because someone did bad things to you and made you bad doesn't mean you have to be bad. I can't promise we can make everything all right, and we have a lot of work to fix things, but we can at least try to make things better."

"So there are more like you? But they can't make more now," says Chloé.

"Now the question is, what do we do next, Schmitty? We can't have you going back to Ixion or the giants or whomever and telling them everything that's happened here. But we also can't just tie you up and throw you in a garage."

Chloé, undaunted, continues her conversation with the "mototaur," as Erika put it. She says, "What's your name, anyway? Where did the 'boss' find you? I think it's pretty clear at this point that their claims of being able to make more like you were lies; they obviously didn't know how to do it. I understand where you're coming from... but you wound up on a bad side on this conflict, and you got a bad deal out of it."

Wowww, that's not the best! Glad to hear that you're on the mend :D

Charisma + Empathy: 8d10 ⇒ (9, 4, 5, 2, 4, 7, 6, 8) = 45 -> 3 successes + 2 auto-successes

With the various dwarves treated for shock, Chloé rejoins the team and buttons up her first aid kit.

"You know," she muses, "his situation is strangely not too unlike that of the dwarves who live here. Looking for others like himself, trying to build a community of people with whom he can relate. But without the divine powers of Ixion or... I don't know, some craft-magic, this kind of fusion is not really something that can easily be replicated."

She regards the motorcycle-taur with a slightly furrowed brow and her eyebrows delicately swept up in the middle of her forehead, in a display of some concern. "It must be a very lonely life, to be unique like this but not have a family or even associates the way that all of us do."

After a momentary pause, Chloé runs to Erika's car and looks for the first aid kit so that she can tend to the unconscious dwarves.

As Erika's gunshot blows off the giant's lower head, Chloé starts visibly. Blood and gore spatters her legs.

Perhaps inspired by the men's exploits, Chloé rushes to try to put the giant to its end, as it rocks back on its heels. Her skills are not nearly at their level - no horizontal spinning leaps, timely ricochets, or pirouettes. Instead she scrambles onto the hood of the Escalade to get enough height to launch herself at the giant, her (sadly mundane) sword gripped in both hands and coming down hard.

Dexterity + Melee + weapon accuracy: 6d10 ⇒ (10, 3, 4, 7, 7, 7) = 38
5 successes, probably not enough, but who knows?

Damage in the unlikely event of a hit: 6d10 ⇒ (10, 5, 2, 10, 9, 5) = 41
Another 5 successes.

Join Battle: 5d10 ⇒ (4, 2, 8, 1, 3) = 18 => 1 success

"Were we followed?"

Chloe is fairly talkative on the long ride back to Long Beach.

"It's so strange, the world being upended like this," she says to Erika. "It's like the world is in black and white but you don't know it, until suddenly it's in color. Wizard of Oz was ahead of its time."

As the ride continues she tries to tease out some more from Erika about herself - both because she seems legitimately interested in knowing more about her compatriot, and because she seems to use talking as a means to expel stress after these kinds of unexpected encounters.

~~~~~~~~~~

As the caravan pulls into Bixby Knoll, she looks about the houses with an expression of wonder. "Now I know where the idea of Santa's Village comes from! Little people, living in the cold north, making treasures in hidden workshops and giving them only to the worthy, right?"

~~~~~~~~~~

Inside the dwarf's hall, she gratefully accepts some water (who drinks water in a dwarf's house?) and is about to say something about their trip when Erika speaks up, so she delicately refrains from swerving everyone's attention and instead takes a comfortable seat to listen to the story.

Ok!

Chloé replies to Nick, "I think it's unlikely that she's not one of us - why capture her, in that case? And where would someone who's not one of us find an actual Midgard dwarf? I think number three is the most likely."

She sighs and says, "If there's going to be more fighting like this, I'd better get... well, better." She tugs at the edges of her coat. "But maybe I can get some more out of her, see how much trust we can risk."

Chloé quickly interjects, "That was just a movie - this is the real deal. No special effects, no stunts. Say, did you get a chance to see any of the rest of the mines before you were captured? Any idea what your captors were up to?"

She carefully stows her arming sword and tosses her hair back, using one hand to gather it again. Somehow, just running her hand through her hair seems to cause it to fall back into perfect place.

"I'll go with you, Nick," she adds. "We should never go somewhere alone."

As Nick takes a drag and goes over his thoughts, Chloé shields her face against the high winds that sometimes whip through the plateau of Bodie.

"I think that judging people solely on the basis of parentage is a bad idea, and I think you probably feel the same way," she says. "Loki may have plans for her, and may have misdirected her, or obscured that he visited her before we received our visit, but that isn't a guarantee that she's our enemy. Loki probably has his own plans. She may or may not be privy to them. The only way we'll know - barring some kind of power that lets you force people to tell the truth, or something like that - is to see how she plays out. But this makes a kind of sense; Loki would get himself into trouble and then Thor would have to bail him out, right? So he repeats that pattern with his offspring and sends her to do something without proper backup and hopes that if it doesn't work out, Fate will intervene. And here we are."

"Sooo... does anyone's movie-like preternatural skill extend to computers?" says Chloé. "These folks must've been down here for a reason... and an abandoned gold mine isn't a great reason, so maybe it's something else down here."

Chloé takes in the rest of the office. Any signs of desks? File cabinets? Computers?

Chloé lets her sword drop to her side. She whispers, "So... what to do we do? Can anyone, I don't know, hear it?"

Will continue guarding while the fighters do the work!

Chloé is quite startled by the sudden bisection of the giant, with the spray of giant-blood reminiscent of her Red Sonja movie poster. She keeps her sword up but, realizing that the trolls are probably too tough for her to injure them, she goes on her guard. She steps back to shift weight onto her left foot behind and changes her sword position to an over-the-shoulder posta di donna.

Wasn't sure since I seemed to recall an earlier roll where someone had a 10 but didn't count it twice, so I didn't know which way to flop.

Chloé brings up the arming sword in her hand and looks slightly uncertain, but she strikes a strong defensive pose as the trolls close in. As soon as one is close enough, she lets out a cry, brings up the sword, and slashes at the troll. Her form is decent, but it lacks the supernatural panache of Dustin or Ulf; her hesitation is clear.

Using spatha stats for arming sword.

Dex + Melee + Accuracy: 6d10 ⇒ (10, 3, 7, 3, 2, 3) = 28

2 successes, probably a miss.

Join Battle: 5d10 ⇒ (7, 4, 7, 7, 7) = 32 4 successes

Chloé passes the binoculars back to Ulf and says, "Time to switch to a flashlight, I think."

After a pause, she says, "If this is like the movies, down is always where things get bad. Like the pit in the second season of Daredevil."

"Oh, thanks."

She peers through the binoculars to get a better look at some of the buildings that are still standing, and at the old mines, just in case she can spot someone - anyone.

After a few moments she holds the binoculars back out for anyone to try. "I don't see much but dust blowing around."

Once at Bodie, Chloé steps out of Erika's car and pulls the trenchcoat that she picked up at Target a bit tighter in response to the sharp wind that cuts across the gravel lot. Beneath she wears a track suit, either an accidental homage to Kill Bill (itself an homage to Enter the Dragon) or possibly a deliberate choice. She pulls an arming sword from the trunk of the car and bounces it up and down a few times, nervously.

"Anyone have binoculars?" she says as she squints and looks out at the cavalcade of decrepit wooden buildings and the distant abandoned(?) mine.

"Dustin, you're a big softie. I love it. So, Erika, what is it that you do? I mean, what your life was like before all of... this," says Chloé. "We're going to be in a car for seven hours, I suppose we'll be talking about everything, might as well know each other better."

"Mmm, sure, but not before I have to drive!" Chloé says, then puts down the glass. "I have a large vehicle as well but I'm just as happy to ride along - less likely to be noticed, anyway; the paparazzi know my plates. Erika, if you don't object...?"

Her own swordfighting - very specific there. She's not strong and agile enough for the gymnastics, those would be doubled by Zoë Bell or someone like that.

"Skál!"

Until we get a few fights under our belts she's also super fragile. No armor, no epic stamina, no epic dexterity, mistakenly thinks that she actually knows how to use a sword. So that will also be fun. :)

Chloé makes a few calls to make sure her shift at the clinic is covered and that her financial planner doesn't freak out at a series of unusual purchases, then says, "I suppose... this is the beginning of the journey, then." She stands and goes to the table and pours a small amount of sparkling apple juice into a cup and says, "Shall we toast to our new endeavor?"

"If they give you any trouble, just hand me the phone."

:D :D :D

Also, while my character may be a celebrity, please don't feel obligated to make that swerve the group dynamic. :)

"I think buying a pistol at all might be troublesome," she replies with a wry smile. "Foreign national, remember? I'm still technically Swiss on a green card."

"But," she adds, "I did my own swordfighting - and the glaive, too."

"While we're at it we should stop by Infinity Ward and see if they want to turn us into a video game," quips Chloé, but just as quickly she reverses herself and says, "Only kidding. Erika - may I call you that? Are we all on a first-name basis now, I suppose? - you're quite right on all counts. There's a Target a bit further west and up Sepulveda, if we want to get something more... suited to wandering around a dusty old ghost town." She gestures at her impractical dress. "Also..." she eyes the ravens, "weapons, perhaps? Not all of us acquired guns or swords or the like."

Chloé takes an iPhone out of her purse and looks something up, then says, "Bodie is almost four hundred miles from here. I'm not sure a Tesla X has the range, unless we make a layover in..." She enlarges a map on her phone screen, then says, "Bishop, it looks like. Or if you have magic lightning in the battery."

She taps the phone a few more times and then says, "There's no hotels in Bodie. It is a literal ghost town. The nearest ones are in Bridgeport. I can make some reservations, if you like."

She glances about the room and says, "Does anyone have anything they need to fetch for this trip? I, uh, will have to make a few phone calls about my jobs."

Intelligence + Academics: 7d10 ⇒ (7, 4, 8, 4, 10, 10, 2) = 45

Chloé's brow furrows momentarily. "Bodie? The ghost town up in northeastern California, past Yosemite?"

Chloé rests her hands on her knees as her leg gently kicks slightly - nerves? anticipation? impatience? She glances from her seat to the new stranger.

'allo!

"It's always 'what dress will you be wearing to the Oscars?' and 'who are you dating now?' and 'did you like kissing Robert Downey Jr.?' They seem to forget that I'm an M.D. now," says Chloé with an eyeroll. "You know, when I went to the Oscars in 2014, the producers wanted me to wear the Red Sonja armor. I threatened to come in my medical scrubs. We compromised with a red carpet dress. Hollywood is obsessed with youth, but you can't be young forever. I made plans to do things... of course now we find out that maybe you can be young forever. Nevertheless, I think my career is taking another significant turn."

She sighs and says, "Whatever we've gotten into, though, it's about more than just me. Dustin, if all of this business of werewolves and giants is true, we're all going to need more practical coaching in martial arts and Crossfit."

"I suppose that depends on what happens with the rest of the world," Chloé says. "I have seen the draft script. I'm, ah, a little booked right now. I'm not sure what I'd say if they asked me about it on E!."

"Skiing and snowboarding. If I went surfing off the coast of Malibu we'd have to worry about paparazzi," she says. "Also, I'd have to buy a wetsuit, as I don't own one at present, though that's really just a minor inconvenience. But I do enjoy the Promenade. If you think that 'team-building' is the order of the day, then so be it. Ulf, have you any more information for us...?"

"Money will not be an issue," says Chloé. "We are, it seems, bound by these strange turns, and now we have but each other to call upon."

Chloé smiles faintly and says, "Yes, that's the one. But what are we moving toward? I have not been told what exactly we are expected to do here, other than that the, well, melodramatic fate of the world depends upon us."

Chloé waits for Dustin to close the door, then accepts a seat and crosses her legs. She listens curiously to Ulf's tale, occasionally nodding, as she absorbs it. When Chase comes off the couch, she nods and actually chuckles slightly, then says, "Of course! Here, just let me..." She takes the pencil and signs her name elegantly with a small flourish, pauses for a moment, then draws a sword underneath the signature and adds "a.k.a. Red Sonja."

"But my heroics are just special effects," she says as she hands the sketchpad back to Chase. "These events... they presage something new and dangerous. Something too real. What was that quote? A world so unreal, and yet simultaneously too real?" she says, (possibly mis-)quoting Big Trouble in Little China.