Jale hears the exchange of fire and curses, feeling useless and worried that her allies are being torn to pieces.
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Have a great day and an even better marriage!
Jale sees the oncoming skiff, and hoots a few times in anticipation. She moves to the western door of the Passenger Lounge, and after scoping the room, hides....ehrmm, takes cover just in the doorway.
Jale's eyes thin imperceptibly as Mog mentions her being on a leash, but pirates will and all that. Besides, if it works, playing nice imprisoner/bad mauler works for the punters. So she settles for an added snarl to keep the fact...fiction true. The wild warrior looks appraisingly as Darian rises up the stairs. He looks...promising.
Jale blinks. Which is never a good sign. Unfortunately the navigator doesn't know that. The gunstock club inches close to the man's nose, its edge flat, like a platter to receive. "So. Lucky for him. Not for you. Hand. It. Over."
Jale had had enough of the snivel. She eyes the navigator keenly. "Just what, technical-like, is your malfunction? Tell me what mindworm exactly is eating at you. " Jale pushes the navigator to the rail. Follows the pattern of the tattoo on her forehead with a fingernail. "Or you fly." [+1d6 auspicious mark]
As the first prisoner to be arrives, Jale sets to with gusto. She yells at the pirate, pushing him/her toward the second. "You! Tie that one up. No. A reel knot! You don't know how to tie a reel knot? It's real simple, geddit? Huh. Call youselves sailors. Whalemeat if you ask me. Fine. Mog. Kindly shoot the first of our new guests who woant comply, because guests you all are, at our convenience. But we doan want you all touching anythings, so we'll please be to ask you to be tied up." Jale watches with eagle eyes and weapons ready while Mog likewise aims.
Seeing Pike heading away and leaving her with two captives, Jale moves a little and widens her arms - boomerang aimed at the pilot, gunstock club still pointed dead at the navigator. "That's it. You both stay like a 'lition politician - no movement and all crap. Or, I brain you and then we'll smell the crap. SO DON"T MOVE!!!"
Jale's attempt at suave yet salty pirate talk needs some improvementeering.
Jale, not trusting the terms currently agreed to, keeps a weather eye on the navigator - both 'club and boomerang pointed in outsretched arms. The wild woman,s rictus frin is accompanied by lifted eyebrows as if to say: "Try me!" Readied Action: Gunstock club attack.
Taking in the room of charts and other items that steal words from people's minds Jale smiles a feral grin at her positioning, and then her eyes widen as her gunstock club is limned in whisps of flame and a keening spirit materialises about her. Surtr's sorcery! Jale opens the door and seeing the raider in the corner steps in so as to allow the spirit to attack, screaming a triumphant "Surprise!!!" as she does so. Move Action: Open door
Jale smiles as Mog takes flight, then drops into space. Literally. Unused to such a maneuver it takes all of concentration to land where she wanted to. [-1 armor, -1 buckler]
En route, Jale traces her totemic tattoo with a finger while intoning the mysteries of her clan.
As the grizzled veteran lays out a plan Jale nods to Pike by way of acknowledgement. Heart pulsing with adrenalin, the feral hunter watches the corsairs' activities with interest, but also looks to see the nature of the prey.
I'm with Seps - captains of our own experience - Mog is good as the pilot, and Jale will defer to his general decision-ness; Pike is a good captain of infantry, and she will recognise that; Surtr is obviously public relations and on-fire department; Liam is captain-of-industry and Seps is captain of healing, hiding and harming, and complements Pike with Tactician. Which leaves Jale as captainess of ... the crows nest? (equal best perception with Seps). Foraging? Weapon making and tattooing?
Jale follows Sep's eye, and sees the chase - she leaps to the rigging, one foot on the rail. The wild woman points at the rock recently landed upon. "Mog - that way! One is harassed by the other, and thus they are both whales distracted. We can make something of this!"
Jale breathes a sigh of relief and returns to creating a space on deck in which to lair, hopefully out of the way of the necessary tasks.
Jale watches the larger vessel hove into view with no small amount of trepidation. "Mayhap it iz just coming in? Let's concentrate on removing ourselves and worry about them if they worry about us...
I'm posting this to all Discussion threads of games I'm in - it'll take me a day or so to catch up!!!
Just to be clear, Jale doesn't want to be captain. She just wants to make it clear she isn't taking orders...yet.
Jale smiles back at Mog, then darts her head back as Pike warns of actual company. The warrior jumps up on her nest of boxes and pulls out her boomerang, gunstock club in her other hand. "Not a fighter among them. Tell you what, let's promise this - everyone of you we catch we drop into the Churn." She follows this up with a feral snarl.
"Opportunity Knocks". A good name, Harper. A pity they are unimaginative savages." Jale listens with half an ear to the debate and dire warnings of imminent danger while making a nest of ropes and boxes into which she deposits her belongings. "You may be steering, but you aren't the captain Mog, so a little less ordering and a little more... aging. Either that or lend a hand." She looks over to the docks. "Is that the militia coming toward us?"
So we are still waiting on Harper Seps and Liam Valenari...
Jale pokes around, gunstock club held out in front to lift lids/ropes/shift boxes etc, her face a grimace, nose scrunched, lips curling ever so slightly. "This deadwhale smells. Who will control it?" she asks in her clipped, slightly accented fashion.
Jale looks askance at the vessel and shrugs. She's seen worse. Then again, those vessels were losing altitude fast and heading straight to the Churn. "Any night's a good night you actually wake up from, Mog. Let's see the dawn."
What the heck, I'll get the throwing enhancement on my gunstock club. Thanks for the link avr.
Ok, thanks avr - I'll consider.
Just realised I haven't spent my 3000 gold yet. @avr - can I get the returning weapon property on my gunstock club? How much would that cost? What would the range be - 10 feet? I was hoping for a little more distance, but maybe I just watched Last of the Mohicans too many times...
Loyalties: Whales/Leviathans - true inheritors of the skies and resplendent reminders that flight is many things - escape, offense, journey and means Bravery - only the coward can be brave, so if you're scared face your fears head on and conquer them, else live life as a shadow Churn - taker, giver, ending and beginning. If you want something gone, give it to the Churn
@avr - Sounds good - if they have, Jale doesn't know about it yet, or has heard vague rumors. Would be a perfect wrench for a people once so enamoured of the whales to turn their interest and knowledge into deadly skills to hunt them. See what you think of this: Jale's Tale: According to the Raal: Once ago, the world lay upon the Mother Leviathan's generous back as she swam through the skies. Verdant lands of rivers and forests, deserts and savannahs, jungles and polar plains, dotted with the ziggurats of her tribes of worthy attendants, of whom the Raal were among the least. A compact the Mother made with her folk, that they would train her whales, breeding them, caring for them and keeping them pure with mutations and new strains. And in return, those who were deemed the utmost were accorded the great honour of riding select whales - brave chieftesses, Whaleriders. But there were, among the unworthy, those who would seek to wrest power from the Mother, and secretly trained and rode whales not suited for riding, not promised as such by the wise among the folk. The unworthy waged unholy war on the loyal folk, and the battles of skyfire and errant technologies damaged the Mother - despite the best efforts of the wisest and most learned mothers, she sickened, and in time, died. And thus, the World broke. The Mother's writhing sent chunks of land hither and yon, and the Raal, humble trackers and herders were thrust apart from others of their kind, and in time, lost, wandered upon their own few islands, keeping their whale lore and wishing again to be counted pure and ascend to the art of whaleriding. ***** When the airships came, the Raal at first thought these were strange whaleriders, and welcomed them with open arms, gifts and the great treasures of their harvests. But these dank cousins, (if cousins they were, for did they not count men and not only women among their chiefs?) were uninterested in the Lore, uninterested in their gifts and treasures, and only interested in whales absentmindedly, as if as a passing notion. Their dead-whales (ships) spewed forth men and labourers and carts and tools and guns and steel....and death. A plague of illness the Raal were unused to, alcohol and drugs they were not familiar with, and, the greatest poison of all - greed. Within a generation the Raal were decimated by one evil or another, and in turmoil the Mothers reached far back into the Lore and summoned a great spell that destroyed the moored dead-whales and scattered the rest - trading posts splintered and men flung into the Churn. For herself, Jale knew not how much to believe of the tales, for she was born in the period after the 'Lition landed, and much of the fracturing of her folk was well entrenched. Her parents had moved deeper into the wilderness, it was true, and trained her in the ways of their people, but when they sickened and died leaving her with three brothers and a baby sister to care for Jale turned to the towns in the days before the Mother's final answer. She was lucky to be aboard ship when the cataclysm struck, having fostered her kin out with a half-sister who married a 'Lition soldier - Jale had snuck aboard a ship and was prising "valuables" from it when the disaster occurred. In the ensuing chaos, Jale jumped from freighter to frigate, clipper to tug, hiring herself out as an able airwoman, fit enough to rough it while aloft and deadly with her club and 'rang. Now, Jale finds herself among a misfit crew of possible-pirates and salvagers. She keeps to herself mostly, a nest of belongings is her space and hers alone. She scribbles notes, her scrawl almost illegible even unto herself - half-remembered snippets of the Lore, notes on whale sightings and any intelligence she can gather - on whales, the Leviathan or the lost Raal or other tribes who revere the Mother. But mostly, riding this dead-whale, Jale dreams the dream of her folk, of riding a whale, and with that her soul shall be free.
@avr - is Jale's tribal background ok to work with - do you have any caveats, thoughts, elisions, tweaks etc? If not I'll happily move forward and create a broad background and some personality flavor. Repeated from upthread: Jale's tribe's island met much the same fate as the islands formerly known as the Fates, and now known as the Dross. I was thinking perhaps the 'Lition forces were responsible for much of the plundering of her homeland(s) in much the same way the Orventian's brought about the destruction of the Fates.
As far as I thought it, Jale's folk were (are) matriarchal, semi-nomadic (both due to seasonal/altitude variations and movement of plateaus and mountains/effects of storms and the Churn below) with strong ancestor worship and a vague doctrine of whale and leviathan worship based on a very non-vague and quite extensively detailed caste system for the flying creatures coupled with some fanciful mutation-categorisation topped off with the usual hunter-heroes in the ancestral stories. All of which may now be Churning away in the down below, or perhaps they survived for later [plot]. Jale's heirlooms include a whale-toothed gunstock club and a whalebone boomerang.
This is Oceanshieldwolf's submission - Jale Raal, shipmate and lone survivor (as far as she knows) of her tribe's island - which met much the same fate as the islands formerly known as the Fates, and now known as the Dross. I was thinking perhaps the 'Lition forces were responsible for much of the plundering of her homeland(s) in much the same way the Orventian's brought about the destruction of the Fates. Jale doesn't hold a particular grudge, as she was nominally an outcast before her tribe was (possibly) destroyed, but she does feel the 'Lition is lionised far too readily. Besides, Jale has a penchant for the finer things in life, and means to get 'em, rustic sensibilities and inability to talk proper notwithstanding. I'm happy for you, avr, to describe her tribe and homeland, or I can create something I think is suitable and you can reign in whatever is beyond outlandish. Honestly, I'm happier with you providing broad brushstrokes for me to work inside of - I'm always wary of stepping outside of settings sensibilities, particularly where the genre is specialised. As far as I thought it, Jale's folk were (are) matriarchal, semi-nomadic (both due to seasonal/altitude variations and movement of plateaus and mountains/effects of storms and the Churn below) with strong ancestor worship and a vague doctrine of whale and leviathan worship based on a very non-vague and quite extensively detailed caste system for the flying creatures coupled with some fanciful mutation-categorisation topped off with the usual hunter-heroes in the ancestral stories. All of which may now be Churning away in the down below, or perhaps they survived for later [plot]. Jale's heirlooms include a whale-toothed gunstock club and a whalebone boomerang.
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