So...um...is this game dead?
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Karlak quietly listens to Mama Cass's praise and admonition, and blinks softly. "Hero..." He whispers softly to himself. "I'd like that. To be a hero. But...but how do I know when to be safe and when to be...not?" His questions don't seem so much directed at the old halfling, but at himself, as he starts to pace. "A hero? Could I? A hero?" His voice is barely a whisper, and he sits down on one of the bunk house's beds, as it creaks under his weight. The look on his face is one of obvious confusion and puzzlement. Mom would be proud if I were a hero.
"How about she tried to kill us? That makes her no better than a bandit. Sorry you're married to a monster that tried to eat us might also work. Or maybe next time I'll let you watch one of these things, and smash your skull in when they infect you." They're an ungrateful lot. You saved their lives.
Karlak bites his lower lip as his internal dialogue gets him worried. This certainly isn't a cut and dry case. "Or bury her with the other. Not like he will know how she died anyway. Say Isen ate her face or something."
Karlak, tired of mixed messages, shakes his head and sighs. "She's dangerous. Nobody seems to agree." He grabs the unconscious Svetlana and simply twists her head backwards until you hear a loud crack, and then throws the limp body on the ground. "Better safe. She tried to hurt us." He then grabs his hammer and, for good measure, winds up and smashes her head in like Gallagher with a watermelon in the 80s, complete with splatter effect. The tiefling, completely covered with gore, furrows his brow. "I think I need a bath now."
Karlak narrows his eyes at Gideon's new face, and snarls a bit, fangs showing. "Maybe the one you had when we met, instead of someone who tried to kill all of us." He spits a chunk of the real Isen's skull and brain tissue out onto the floor. "Stuck in my teeth there for a minute. All better now."
Karlak grimaces at the smell of the egg sac and shakes his head. Considering Svetlana hasn't moved all this time, he holsters his weapon and grabs her unconscious body. "This is a shop. It should have a safe room they keep valuables in, no? Why don't we throw her in and lock it up until Oleg comes to, since you don't seem to want me to twist her head off, for some reason." The tiefling snarls. I don't know what these things are, but I don't like them at all.
Karlak narrows his eyes at Svetlana, but continues to hold his hammer back. "I will watch this one, just in case. If you need help, let me know."
Karlak smiles slightly at all of the praise thrown at him, and Cass's hug gives him pause. He nods to Szemyan. "I'll smash her skull open with my hammer. Should work well." Karlak reaches over for his hammer and starts to walk towards Svetlana. He stops over her, gripping tight on the weapon. He lowers the head of the hammer to just over her skull and begins to make careful aiming motions...
Karlak continues to scream, tearing the deflated body to shreds briefly before pausing, suddenly...his body tensing for a moment, and he breathes out, slowly, eyes closing. He spits out a mouthful of gore, and frowns. "Tastes disgusting." He opens his eyes and looks around at the others, and sighs. He relaxes his posture a bit. "That...was different." He grabs one of the nearly transparent chunks, very carefully, and lifts it up, looking through it. "Wake up Oleg. Talk to him. These things are for killing." He grips his fist tight and watches the flimsy chunk crumble to dust.
Karlak's eyes widen at Isen's declaration, and heedless to his own safety, the the second he hears the word die, the whites of his eyes turn a bloody red. The tiefling roars in fury, and claws lengthen from his hands. He digs them into Isen's back, tearing into the "boy", and he attempts to bite clean into the back of his victim's skull, fangs crushing into the bone as if it were nothing thicker than an apple.
BTW anyone else speak Abyssal? Some of you either don't have languages listed, or I can't find them in my lazy quick once-over of each sheet.
Karlak's eyes widen a moment, and his facial features soften at Cas's touch. His smile seems genuine, and his fangs barely even show. You can see some of the tension in his body relax, just a bit. He doesn't lessen his grip on Isen, though, and keeps him pressed against the wall, just in case. She said I did good.
The red lining his coal black eyes fades back some, and Karlak inhales deeply, before exhaling slowly. "Thank you, Ma'am." He looks at Isen and whispers. "Don't make me hurt you. I don't want to, but I will if I have to."
Karlak suddenly seems shocked at Andelis and Szemyan's revelations,
Rip his throat out.
"That was not part of the deal." Razor-sharp claws extend from his fingers, and you can see his muscles twitching to move to the front of the boy's throat, but instead, he turns and uses the hammerlock to slam the boy's face and front against the wall of the room again. Karlak's voice loses some of the razor's edge it had earlier. It softens just a bit, but not to where it was when you were traveling.
He smiles. That was smart.
From behind the boy, with one hand holding him in the hammerlock, and the other on the back of his skull, Karlak is a bit too easy playing "bad cop" to pay attention to the boy's throat. His eyes narrow. He looks to Mama Cas, because, well, frankly she seems the most matronly of the group, and raises an eyebrow. "He lying?" He snarls a bit. "I'm not the smartest, but I cook my food, and chew it, instead of swallowing it whole. Even my mamma taught me that much." His snarl lengthens to an outright growl. "Maybe rip out and try again. Burn, and chew, and chew, and chew."
Karlak snarls and snatches Isen's arm, pulling it back behind him in a hammerlock, with his other hand holding the back of his head - not his hair, but his huge hand palming the young man-thing's skull like an all-star basketball player, but with claws ready to burrow through the flesh and bone. Now holding the captive in front of him he makes sure to pull his arm up high enough to be on the border of dislocating. His voice is a snarl at Isen's pleading. "You better hope they like the answers. I'm hungry, and more than a little annoyed that she licked me. Maybe I rip one or two of those tongues out of her mouth if you lie to them. Think they'll taste like cow tongue?" His eyes flicker, and briefly, just briefly, his facial features soften, as he looks at the rest of the party. "I think he'll talk now." His voice sounds almost ashamed, but he shakes his head and hardens his features again. You can't go soft when you're making the enemy talk.
"Khar'tech, mrash kaz felt. Meh't krask sarhlar t'zaack."
Speaking in Abyssal: "Make it quick. I'm not sure how long I can hold this back."
Karlak, finally back to his senses, grabs the unconscious Isen by his throat, lifting him up with his left hand and slamming his body against the wall. His eyes, already a pure coal black begin to outline with a blood red sheen. His brow furrows, and his lips move back just enough to show his fangs. "Kill her, then. I'll make this one talk." A heavy hand reaches back and cracks Isen across the face with a huge smack, pointedly loud, but intentionally just hard enough to wake him up. He pulls the 'man' closer to his face, breath hot, fangs inches from it's neck, and the claws on his hands beginning to sharpen as he holds back his bloodrage from erupting. You can see a trickle of blood from his tight grip, and he snarls. Scare him. But I'm still in charge.
Karlak's voice sounds somehow sharper when he next speaks. More articulate. Not intelligent, but there's a slow, keen cunning
"Wake up, thing, or I'll peel off and eat the skin from your f&@+ing face until the pain wakes you up. My friends here have some questions, and you're going to answer them, and if I don't like those answers, I'm going to start breaking bones. If I think you're lying, I'm going to do some interesting things with my claws, your skin, and all the salt I can find in this shit hole of a shop. It'll probably take a while for you to actually die. I don't know. I'm not much of an expert on not killing evil monsters that attack innocent people, but I'll be sure and try. Do you understand me? DO YOU!?" To add a little fuel to the fire be begins to unfurl his wings to their full extent. Again, they clearly cannot be used to fly, due to the numerous tears, rips, and holes, but the demonic visage upon him is far more noticeable, and his tail flicks, smacking the air with a whip-like crack to add to the emphasis of each sentence.
Karlak's breath is heavy, and from the look of him, you can tell he's just waiting to take some action or another. You're not sure if it's just to kill the man-thing, or actually follow through on his threats of torture.
As the sucker slams into his arm and begins draining the energy from him, there's a clatter as Karlak drops his weapon and is stunned. His teeth grit as he tries to push against the paralytic poison, but he is unable to move. Let me loose, weakling. I will rip her to shreds with our bare hands! Can't....move...
IF I got an AoO before hit:
Caught off guard by the shrieking sound, Karlak's grip on his lucerne hammer tightens, but before he can look up, he catches "svetlana"'s tentacle to the chest, but it doesn't break through the thick scales of his armor. As the unearthly tentacle pulls back, Karlak snaps at it with his razor-sharp teeth before the pseudolimb can pull away, and then steps backwards to take a quick sweep at "her" chest with his hammer.
The look in the tiefling's eyes is now obviously shifted. It's like a battle focus, but with an intensity...a fury somewhere deep within... as if he's looking through his target and not quite at it. His already deep voice has a vicious, and disturbing rattle to it as it almost seems like another person is speaking through his mouth mid-battle... Abyssal: "You chose the wrong demon to f&~$ with, creature. I'll rip your flesh from it's bones, feast on it while you yet live, and vomit it up just to have another chance to let you watch me eat your skin! This host has no idea the torment through me he can put you through..."
It seems that Karlak is a bit too distracted by the young lady conversing with him to notice anything amiss in the night, despite his keen eyesight and ability to see in total darkness. He simply smiles at her, trying to hide his fangs with a close lipped smile, and nervously taps his armor. "Um. I guess we just wait, huh?"
The tiefling smiles back at the wizard. She's being nice to me. She's scared of you. I say she's being nice. If he were't already a deep shade of crimson, the simple concept of a woman near his age being even slightly friendly to him would have turned Karlak a brighter red, but fortunately for him, that was only barely perceptible if the viewer was really paying attention. "Well...I'd say I'll try to stop the bigger threat. It would be easier to hit a target that is clear, so I'd say whichever I'm not on." He slides the haft of his lucerne hammer over to his left hand, leaning the broad head over his left shoulder, and spends a moment wiping his right hand off on the cloth of the bed, "cleaning" it, as it were, before extending it to Andelis. "Um, hi," he stumbles out eventually, "I'm Karlak. I know I met you, but I don't think I met you, met you. You know. Um..." He bites his lower lip in thought, trying to remember. Intro...intero....inner-duck-ins? Oh, wait, I know! "Greetings. We didn't have greetings." The beading sweat on his forehead after that ordeal could easily be confused for dealing with humid air. Probably.
Karlak nods at Leo and pulls the massive hammer from his back, giving a light thud on the ground. "Yelling. Come to help. Yes, sir."
Karlak looks down at his heavy scalemail, and the huge hammer strapped on his back and kind of shrugs, giving a shink, shink sound when he does. "Not me. But if you need someone to keep others' eyes on..."
The large tiefling cracks his neck left and right and nods at the elf. "If that's what you want, sir. I won't hurt her. Usually lifting someone two feet from the ground by their collar tends to get them to move along quietly..." He grins, quite possibly the first real smile you've seen from the tiefling, and there's a little glint in his eye hiding a darkness beneath the surface that the man-child clearly was trying to hold under. Sharp fangs glint in the light of the fire, and it's about then you notice just how razor sharp they are. ...and if she resists, and you throw her a few feet, that's just part of the... NO! You're no fun. "I will wait until one of you tries to talk her nicely away. If she doesn't move willingly, she will eventually." I'm growing on you, boy. Every time you let loose I get stronger you know. Shut up. I'm not like you. "I hope she listens to you." No you don't.
Karlak pauses at Cas's words and furrows his brow. "So the safest thing is to remove him, but he won't want to. He'll be angry." He stands up and stretches, flicking his tail and unfurling his wings, clearly of no use flying with the number of scars, tears, and rips that have been abused upon him over the years. "If he's going to be angry at someone, it should be me. I can make him leave, by fear or by force, if you need time to destroy....whatever that cocoon thing is." He looks around at the others circumspectly, as if to question if it was a good idea at all. "I mean, if looking like a demon has one good thing, it's I can scare people pretty well, and if that doesn't work, he weighs...what...twenty plat or so , no? I tossed hay bales that size with one arm for momma." He blinks. "I won't hurt him. I'll just...tell him to get out...in a not very nice way." He looks around for quick reassurance. "Not that I'm a mean guy, just...sometimes people don't listen to a nice me." I told you you're a monster
The big tiefling shakes his head suddenly, as if snapping out of a trance once the others start talking. His mind was in it's own world for a moment. The dark growling had gotten a bit louder at the thought of spilling blood, and was not happy to be denied, but Karlak knew opportunities would avail themselves. As for the moment, it seemed like the group was investigating the fort, and the man's...disease? They seemed to think it was a disease. "Mama said you should burn sick things. Not people, but...clothes n' blankets n' stuff. If there's something making him sick maybe we can burn it? Fire don't hurt me much. Can I help?" He takes a seat at the edge of one of the beds, it creaking slightly but holding his weight. He bites his lower lip, quizzically trying to think about the problem on hand. Wish I could be more helpful.
Karlak visibly blanched at Mac's joke about him speaking for the group, but when they arrived and he was preempted by the others, you could see the sweat on his brow cool just a little bit. It was a long walk to Oleg's place, and Karlak was content to remain quiet, help carry his share, and listen to the others talk. Is this what it's like to be around more than one person who doesn't hate? They seem mostly to ignore me. That's...nice. When Mama Cass offered to help the sick man he seemed confused. "He probably already has good soup, Miss. What else can you..." He pauses. "I...have a knife. I mean...if that's what you meant." The end of his words trail off quietly when Svetlana arrives at the door. He takes his helmet, puts it in both his hands, and gives a slight bow at the woman, who even in all her height is dwarfed by the tiefling. "Ma'am" he mutters softly.
I like to think of it as self defense manslaughter vagrant transient lifestyling.
Karlak takes his copy of the charter and begins to read it semi-silently, a finger following the lines as you can hear him sounding out the longer, more esoteric language in a quiet whisper. "...rep-re-sent-a-tives...im-in-int domain?" He frowns, but seeing that the others seem to understand, he plays along. "I think I know Mr. Oleg. I haven't gone to his shop in a long time. Years."
Karlak blinks and remains silent at the halfling's reading and steels his jaw at the mention of his mother, holding in the emotions at the thought of her. Gideon's comment causes pause, and he nods. Leo's gruff attitude doesn't seem to bother the tiefling. In fact it reminded him of the butcher in the town he used to visit, angry for some reason, in the butcher's case usually his wife, but inevitably not a bad sort - he didn't even charge Karlak the "demon tax" the general store did...
The tiefling fishes out some hard tack and breaks off a piece for the bird. "My name is Karlak. This is all I have to eat. If I find some berries I will tell you." His ears twitch at the word Abyss, and he suddenly gets defensive. "I didn't do anything. I'm here to help. I know I look like a bad person, but I'm not." Eyes narrow, and his knuckles crack as he prepares to dodge thrown stones or rotten fruit, as usual on trips to town, but when none comes he visibly relaxes. Could these be nice people? Seems like it. Hope so. Karlak scoops up his backpack and steps up before the old halfling and nods. "Yes ma'am. Ready, ma'am. "
The tiefling's eyes open wide at the talking bird and his jaw drops, only momentarily. He walks up to the familiar and blinks again, tilting his head and staring at it in amazement. He looks at Lemnis, and quietly whispers "That is so...cool! Can I give your friend a treat? Mom used to let me feed the horses sugar. But do you like rations, Mr. Bird?" A forked tongue sticks out to the side in deep concentration as he starts to dig in his bag for food. And just as easily as the noble had his attention, the talking bird stole it. "I like birds. Do you know the woodpecker outside mom's cabin? I used to dig worms up for him..." At this point, Karlak, enamored with the talking bird, is a bit ignorant to the task at hand.
Standing quietly, but tall and proud, with his massive chest out, the muscular tiefling would be red with nervousness, if his skin were not already a bright, vibrant scarlet. Batlike wings are folded over his shoulders, though it looks as if they have tears, rifts taken in battle and scars that haven't quite healed. He stares ahead quietly, and blinks at the man, seeming like he's focusing on every word the noble speaks. After a long pause, he looks around quietly, and when nobody else speaks up, he clears his throat, a bit of a rumbling on the large fiend man, and in a deep bass voice speaks. "So...I can kill bandits...and you will give me money?"
Karlak seems like he's just trying to figure out what's going on here, and is way too distracted to see anything the man is trying to hide. Make mom proud. Do good. Bandits are bad. Sounds like an easy job. I miss mom. She'd know what to do.
The bulky tiefling blinks at the elf and the strange pale humanoid, thinking him no more than an alibno, and he raises an eyebrow quizzically, as if confused. "Wait. Charter? Um. I found a note. It said that 'good men of...'...um...hold on." He reaches a hand into his belt pouch and fumbles around a bit, pulling out a small folded parchment, and begins to slowly, carefully unfold it. You can see sharp fangs as he bites his lower lip in concentration, reading the words with difficulty. "...strong cal-i-bur...are needed to bring...to bring..." He begins sweating, noticing he drew attention to himself, and smiles nervously, which considering his mouth full of razor sharp teeth, is more than a little disconcerting to see. "...I'm sorry, um...but it basically said kill bandits, right? Um. That's...that's what we're here for, right? So they can't keep...robbing people? That's what the scribe I gave a silver to said 'right of summary judgement' meant. Right? Um...is that the...charter? 'Cause I'm here for that." He stands up and seems like he is trying quickly to straighten out his armor before giving up. He takes in a deep breath, and you see his eyes roll to the side just a bit - as if trying to remember or recite something. He extends a hand between the two men. Okay. No mistakes. Don't sound strange. Don't mess up. Be human.
"Hello. I am Karlak. I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, my good sir. Um...sirs." DAMNIT! The wince is almost, but not quite, unnoticeable.
"He said characters." The massive, six and a half hulking beast of a tiefling grabs his player firmly by the collar and belt, and drunk-tosses him out of the thread, like a tavern bouncer with a halfling that's had too much. "Sorry" The huge red skinned fiendling rumbles, his voice surprisingly meeker than you would expect from such an imposing figure. "Won't happen again." He fidgets nervously for a moment, finds a chair, and sits down, folding his claws over his lap, as his huge knees fold up nearly to his chest. Need bigger chair. Could I...sit on the table? No. Must look normal. Must...act...normal. |