Harauld Fjornid's page

I'm swamped at the moment if you'd rather have a single group of 7. I'd like to play, but I am super busy and would slow down the start.

Still here.

Gladiatorial combat!

Outright conflict with other pantheons has been a rare thing, given the potential for it to escalate to a world-threatening catastrophe. Which hasn't precluded lesser conflicts, or even cold wars where there's entrenched enmity.

Aren't we a bit past that point?

DM Barcas here. Profile created.

Bad day to be unable to post.

Guys, I have am idea. Alayne is a little redundant with a lot of characters in ability, role, and story. At the same time, we have a dearth of melee characters. How would you all feel about me putting in Mikhail Halancoun, the dhampir antipaladin and fallen prince of Talingarde, as , you submitted character instead?

Alayne listens to the elven conversation, a language that she understands. She has passing experience with Infernal, but she has little ability to translate the precise meanings. When Victor raises his cup in mock toast, she does the same. "May the rest of us escape such a fate." She drinks the cool water, letting it parch her throat. She has no expectation that the rest of them will do more than provide a cover for her to escape and put on a new mask, but she can hardly say to their faces that she would sacrifice all of them as a distraction. Escape is a common delusion for prisoners, the idea of a grand fight for freedom being popular in songs and poems. But they have no other visages to use to gain freedom. They will be immediately hunted down and killed before they can make it out of the city. But not her. She can, with hardly more than a few seconds, shed this face - as much as she has grown to appreciate it - and gain another of her own choosing. Whatever can be done must be done before they arrive at Branderscar Prison, if its reputation is to be believed.

Aylene whispers back to the orc-blooded man, who seems all too eager to help her. "Good. Watch for the right opportunity, and not a moment sooner. They are vigilant, surely, but not every moment. There will be a time in which to act, just as now is a time to wait." She nods at him, pleased to have so quickly found someone willing to follow. While she dislikes being so open with her commands and her plans, she has little choice considering the circumstances. Once she is free, and if he still proves useful, she can use her talents to solidify her control over him.

She turns in her seat to Felrin, ignoring the odd growth on his shoulder. "We'll just have to ensure that you don't have to fulfill your end of the bargain until you're good and ready, then. What did you receive in exchange for so high a price?" She doesn't mention what she heard him say earlier about his ability to change, even though it piqued her interest. His description sounded similar to her own abilities, though her control over the process seems a great deal more refined.

Twelve they stand, masked and robed, in an unremarkable building in the edge of the capital. None of them knew the identities of the other - that was the point of the mask - though she knows each of the individuals under the concealment. Aylene stands among them, wearing her stolen face under the mask. She supposes that she could wear her normal face underneath the mask, for none would be able to tell. Aylene's image is her preferred one, a prettier and more normal look than the human face she was born with; the monstrous fox is one she prefers to only wear while alone or shifting. Holding the mask of Aylene in place is simple for her, ingrained over the last several years of its usage as her primary identity. The orphan girl that she was is all but gone. She cannot recall the last time she shifted into that face, a face that saw too many bad memories.

The masked cultist, the bored son of an absurdly wealthy merchant, steps forward with a curved dagger. He reaches forward and grabs the man by his chin, pulling it upwards. He makes a piteous sound from behind the gag, but she feels nothing for him. He is a means to an end. Before the cultist can move forward to make the sacrifice, a sudden slamming interrupts them. "In Mitra's name!" The door to their hidden cabal explodes open with a score of knights charging in. She has seen their leader before, a paladin of Mitra by name of Sir Balin. He wades into the cultists, slashing them down with his holy blade. "We will not suffer blasphemers to live!"
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Aylene sits in sullen silence in the shared cell as the others speak. The fact that she had been caught chafed her badly; she retraces the group's weaknesses in her mind and cannot determine the culprit. Seeing as all of her compatriots were killed by Sir Balin and his knights, they are all but eliminated. Death would be a terrible reward for betrayal, though a fitting one from her point of view. If anyone else was alive to investigate, they might suspect her as the sole survivor, but Aylene knows that she cannot be the source of betrayal. Besides, the others were too loyal to her; she had ensured that all of them would die before betraying the cult.

Only her desperate plea to Sir Balin, who foolishly showed the 'poor wretched girl' mercy, had saved her life. The paladin was too decent to execute a surrendered young lady pleading coercion by the now-dead cultists. The Mitrans had interrogated her - harshly - over several days to try to break her will, but her twisted relationship with pain brought them no closer to the truth. Her desperate cries during the torture were for show, as she lied that she knew nothing of the cult's doings. They spoke of bringing in the most talented of their number, only to show that to be an empty bluff. The trial had been a farce, predicated entirely on Sir Balin's testimony that he saw her willingly participating in the murder, and the testimony of the man that they saved. Her barrister had argued that they had not met the burden of proof, and that no one saw her unmasked during the initial charge of the paladin and his men, but he was unpersuasive. 'Perhaps I should have asked for the blonde as my advocate; at least she would do whatever is necessary to ensure my freedom.'

She dutifully changes her clothing when it is her turn to do so. Unfortunately, the eyes of the guards remain upon her. Given the chance while undressed, she would shift into a different face and try to make an escape. She has been looking for the opportunity since her capture, but they have been quite diligent thus far. In lieu of an escape, she watches her fellow captives. Some of them may yet be useful, and some may be easily sacrificed to buy her freedom. She mentally catalogues their strengths and weaknesses: Hecate's innocence and naivete; Doctor Wilken's mind and total lack of morality; the advocate's desperation and vice; and the others. She plots about how she might work within those weakness to use their strengths to her own ends. She simply watches and absorbs information as much as she can; if these are to be her cellmates, she should know them.

When the fallen inquisitor speaks, she sees an opening. "Well, I know their actions firsthand. I was tortured for days, but I told them nothing." She leans forward conspiratorially and whispers to the others; she knows that she must tell some form of the truth for them to trust her enough to help her. "I was captured while in prayer for Norborger, the Reaper of Reputation. They wished to know of other followers, but they could not break me. Pain is an old friend of mine. They should have known better." She leans back, speaking in a normal voice. "My name is Aylene. I fear that I have been sentenced to death, but I frown upon that possibility. Surely I am not alone in that belief. Do any of you welcome death?" She sits back and takes a bite of the breakfast, enjoying the prospect of food before the dangerous challenge that awaits them.

I will get a post in soon. I have one mostly typed, though it is a flashback. I may save that one for later and jump right in as soon as I can, so as to not lose momentum.

Hello, my friends. I hope that Sigz puts in his application as well. He has been by PBP player for three years and is a fantastic player. I look forward to this Phase 3 process.

Yes for house rule.

DM Barcas - Phase Two

AYLENE SOKORRA || THE SCHEMER
NE Female Kitsune Sorcerer 1

Aylene Sokorra is the preferred name of a scheming, shape-shifting sorceres - but it is far from her only alias, and she gains and drops identities as quickly as she changes her form to match. She considers herself an assassin, though she has never killed anyone personally; her machinations have caused many deaths - and now they may cause her own.

Aylene was less than a day old when she became an orphan. Her birth was a difficult one, and her mother did not survive. Her father left as soon as he had arrived in Talingarde, leaving Aylene's mother heartbroken, alone, and with child. The labor was intensely painful, and the poor woman began babbling to the midwife that the child was cursed. She lunged at the delivered child with the last of her strength, hoping to snuff the baby girl's barely-begun life. As the city guards rushed into the birthing room, they found Aylene's mother in a desperate rage trying to stab the baby with a knife from the delivery. When the terrified midwife ran to the guards for protection, the new mother attacked them. She stabbed one to death before the others were forced to slay her to defend themselves and the child.

The nameless girl was taken to an orphanage immediately and turned over to the clerics of Mitra. With the most talented of the faith dedicated to the purge of Asmodeans, the few who remained raised the children there begrudgingly. Their needs were taken care of, but little else. Aylene was given a name, though she now pretends not to know it. Life in the orphanage was equal parts boredom, toil, fear, and anger. Most of the clerics were uncaring, and one in particular was cruel: Father Thumas. He was a cleric of Mitra, the Fire Undying; this aspect of the triune god is one of brittle discipline and righteous anger. He took out his anger that he was barred from joining the crusade against Asmodeus out upon the children.

Thus, Aylene grew into a child, and then a young woman. Many of the other children shunned her because of her red hair and unnaturally pale skin, saying that she was a child of the devil. It was no secret among the clergy or the children about the circumstances of her birth. She was miserable, and her rage grew with every barb and attack. She grew up with a hardened heart, especially under Thumas's petty cruelties and corporal punishment. She was a willful child, accepting his punishments with a cruel smirk; this only made him strike harder the next time she failed to recognize his authority, each time harder and harder.

At the age of thirteen, she changed for the first time and discovered her heritage. She was up all night with a fever, turning on her piteously small mattress as the other girls slept. As the fever burned, she vomited in the bed and felt a tremendous pain as if every bone in her body was breaking. She staggered to the privy, where a glance at the mirror terrified her: she had turned into a fox-like creature with backwards-facing hands. She hid in the privy as the pain took her again. By the time dawn arrived, she appeared the same as she did before the change. Every month, the agony of the change returned. Each time, she turned from an odd-looking human girl to a monster. Fortunately, it remained her secret. As she grew older, she began to welcome the change. She tried to will herself to change more often, and after a few years she learned how to control it. While still extremely painful, she found herself learning to enjoy the pain of her shifts.

When she was sixteen, she learned that she could control it to change her appearance to the mask of anyone she has met. She began using this ability to sow discord at the orphanage. The budding romances of the other orphans were disrupted by infidelity. Children were witnessed stealing things, even though they denied it desperately. Father Thumas, now the headmaster of the orphanage, could not control the growing chaos within the ranks of the children. His discipline grew more and more painful for them, but the behavior worsened. Father Thumas himself was stripped of his position when he was discovered in bed with a young boy; little did the inquisitors know that Aylene had shifted her form into a prostitute that he visited, only to shift again into a young beggar boy when the inquisitors arrived to investigate her tip. With Father Thumas gone and the orphanage in chaos, the church made the decision to close it and discharge the children to the world.

Aylene found her newfound freedom intoxicating. She quickly used her unique abilities to establish herself as a young noblewoman in Matharyn. She adopted the appearance and name of a visiting merchant's daughter. She sowed the same discord in the ranks of the young nobles, in much of the same ways. She found that possession of secrets was more valuable than any gold, though her lust for possessions could also not be slaked. At the same time, her powers and abilities developed further. She discovered that she had the ability of arcane magic in her blood, giving her more skill at enchanting the minds of others. Her schemes grew grander until they became her downfall.

Aylene, now twenty-two years old, fell in with a hidden cult of Norberger, god of murder and secrets. In this cabal of masked men and women, she found the acceptance that she craved. Together, they schemed to draw in an ally to Talingarde - the long-purged Church of Asmodeus. The quiet attempts to discover Asmodean elements remaining in the nation were enough to attract the attention of the inquisitors of Mitra. They discovered the cult's meeting, surrounded it, and put the building to flame. All of the others were killed; only her silver tongue kept her alive for a trial. She insisted that she had been tricked, but the quick trial still convicted her of blasphemy and sentenced her to death.