Search Posts
Sadly, I think I'm going to have to bow out. I had some doubts about time constraints, and that's proving to be the case. Which sucks, I was enjoying the game and the character. I just don't have the time to commit to it currently. Sorry for dipping out. Best wishes to everyone.
Karm remains where he sits, even as the others scatter below and into the night itself. Finally afforded silence and solitude, he removes his skull-helmet. Long, frayed locks of silver and grey pour down to meld seamlessly into an equally untended beard. His face bears a pained expression, but it is not the injuries sustained this very night that justify the grimace. Past blunders and new blunderers contribute equally to the degradation of the world they dwell upon. All are ignorant of the grand tapestry; all are ignorant of the threads they ruin. As Karm's hands seek to mitigate their blind ruin, the weight of its futility settles heavy upon his shoulders like a mantle of stone. Each sliver of dawn's void that mingled with that of creation stood out like rent fabric. Like children led by curiosity, they dabble with forces impossibly beyond their ken, rending themselves from the grand tapestry without realizing it. It is a poison the old Hrim knows well, for it's the same poison that flows through his veins. Decades now behind him, and still his mistakes threatened to consume Karm. Would it be any different for those who followed in his wake? Could he alter the course of others as he had his own fate? Or do they only exist to remind him of how utterly cursed he is? "Rimhildr... is it truly so hopeless?" The old northman looks on the verge of death while strange shapes, words, and patterns undulating beneath his skin. He replaces his helm and continues his work with the loom. "No. Whatever the cost, this path I weave for myself. They will see reason or join the very nothing they seek to command."
Without remark, Karm slides over to where his bed sits—or what's left of it. Propped against the wall nearby sits his loom. Easing himself down onto the shredded mattress with an audible groan, both from age and pain, he props his staff across knee and up over shoulder to begin weaving himself and others a new destiny. His hands perform the labor as if it is a motion he has rehearsed times beyond counting, and he allows a bit of his own blood to mingle into his work intentionally. Karm's gaze remains affixed to Horn and Mandus, a grim and foreboding thing given the countenance of the old Hrim's helm.
Karm grips his staff tightly and yanks it free from its imprisonment within his foe's rib cage. His haste and the necessity of the moment force the man to overexpose himself substantially, but he puts his faith in Horn's tenacity. In one long stride, he closes the distance to the prepared ritual circle—a small ring of runic script serving as impetus to the larger whole. His eyes flit about the room to the runes as they lose their light. What is this? Do the shades drink in this as well?
"Kraga take you, shadewoven pests!" comes a hiss through the mouth of Karm's skull-helm. His goal is robbed from him along with his staff, so the seiðmenn tempts fate again as he clutches at the stick. As his hands claw for the key to his ritual, he calls out in a bellow, ""
Karm needs desperately to enact the ritual as they had initially planned, but his path forward remains obstructed by the dwarf and the trio of shade-skeletons ahead. If only he could manage to make it to ritual circle, he could summon the energies required . . . Though nimble for his age, Karm's reflexes do not compare with that of the skeletal monstrosities ahead of him. He brings his staff up before him as he draws their ire, his path firmly blocked. The butt of the length of ash wood clacks harmlessly off of ribcage, and the old Hrim stands sorely exposed—his gambit had not paid off at all. "Aggggh! I need a path!"
Karm growls out in a deep and throaty voice, "What I mean is do not relent with your strikes until our foes are scattered back into the nether, friend Boulderback!" Their opponents dimmed the very light of their souls, and Karm is hesitant to offer up further morsel for the banquet. Were his own soul not so marbled with vileness, perhaps his efforts would see more promising results. It mattered little, and served no one to dwell long on such obstacles. These beasts were susceptible to more than just light, and at Karm's disposal were vast arsenals of magical power. Noticing the bat ploy is paying off, Karm watches Skorabor finish the shade that stands nearest to the pair, then turns his attention to another that moves to replace its dark brethren. The butt of his staff taps the floor once and remains upright of its own volition. Floorboards begin to creak and rattle as Karm grunts out another phrase in the Auld tongue known by few: "" The vial atop his staff reverberates with the shriek of the bats, gathering up sonic energy from their efforts to unleash against the shade in the form of a hazy bolt of pure energy. It sails across the open air between wizard and shade, mostly unseen in the dim lighting, to smash square into the thing's face.
Even as their trap springs around them, Karm wonders if they have sorely underestimated the tenacity of their foes. As the last vestiges of his spell vanish into twinkling motes of expended energy, Karm coughs and hacks loudly. Even so brief as the serpentine blast was, the befouled nature of his foe perverted the dweomer. The old wizard can taste the very stagnation that constitutes their being, as surely as if he had bitten into a rotten onion. Words lost as he tries to sputter and expel the darkness that briefly afflicts him, Karm grabs up his staff from where it leans against the headrest of his bed: a gnarled, worn length of ash wood whose many-pronged tip is scarred black with fire. Within the cage formed by the prongs rests a vial of blood, and it is the contents of this vial that the Hrim wills his magic into. Lumination, at long last . . . . . . it flickers and dims before emitting an ominous groan. Darkness oppresses and conquers the spell he weaves, a roiling miasma of darkness filling the vial instead of the light he sought to manifest. Through clenched teeth, Karm can only manage "There are... too many!"
Plans are such fragile creatures. Karm's eyes behold a host whose numbers climb higher than what was anticipated. There now resides within the aged seiðmenn's mind a small pang of doubt, the effectiveness of his ritual no longer so certain. Skorabor's flight from his own bed to Karm's aid is a welcome boon, though the thump of the dwarf across the floor immediately drowns his fleeting hope. His bed affords no protection, and the old Hrim does not intend to remain a feast for the agents of their pursuer. But he is not as spry as his younger days, his attempt to rush to his feet slow and gangly. Upon his flesh exist words of making, unmaking, and a testament to the tapestry of the very void preceding creation itself. But it is not these ancient, dread forces that he seeks to coax with his voice and dance. A mere shadow of true power, but bereft of the corruptive currents said powers represent, Karm begins intoning minor words of power in a great, booming voice. "" Even as the incantation is uttered, his words transform into serpents of light upon his very tongue. They stretch through the air, seemingly tethered to the grim, skull-and-antler helmet the old eccentric always wears. As one, the two serpents lash out at the nearest shade.
Here's a couple more Bonds for now. I'll likely hold off on more for the time being, until Gameplay affords us some more opportunities to reevaluate our connections to one another.
I'll try to come up with some extra bonds for the new faces. I would imagine that Karm is going to harp on Mandus' necromancy a fair bit over the course of gameplay. It is a rather glaring example of the very same powers he has come to shun.
Certainly. Given that you are all to serve as part of the ruse, filling you in would be wisest (lest you actually go to sleep and get nipped whilst dreaming).
Sorry for the late contribution here, I've been tired and busy aplenties the past week. A finalized version of Karm will exist momentarily within the appropriate Profile.
Tales of the strange wizard-wanderer are not uncommon. According to legend, he is an angry spirit of the northern tribes. A great and tall thing that wears terror for a face: a human skull locked firmly in the vice of a bear's teeth and jaw bones, atop which curls the many pronged antlers of a stag, though the latter are stained black as the soul that they rest upon. His hair is a great mane of tattered raven feathers that spill down upon a cloak of the same make. The rest is a patchwork of fur and bone. To hear the voice of the Rìkrǫdd is to face the final bell toll of one's fate. To look upon his eyes is to stare into the great void between realms. For wherever he goes, death and wickedness follows in his wake. (Now for something a little more factual): Tales, however grand, are often based on at least a hint of truth. Karm does indeed wear a skull (though it is a "face plate" of a stunted ogre, not a human skull) with a bear jaw and pitch-stained antler horns. His cloak and hood are fashioned from prize raven feathers. His clothing consists primarily of stag and bear furs worn atop simple woolen and leather garments, around and atop which dangles armies of various pouches, bones, and other arcane paraphernalia. Not indicated by the tales is the fact that what is contained on his bare skin is more frightening than his already grim facade. His entire climb to power is recorded on his flesh: scars, tattoos, markings, burns, piercings. Even now, the images and words recorded upon his skin crawl as if alive. The rest is greatly exaggerated. He is a man, like any other. Though death has followed in his wake a great many times, recent years have not lent much truth to such accounts.
On Karm's Kingdom: The Hrimlands are where he was born, though they have not been his home for many, many years. This is evident in that his speech and dialect no longer bear any trace of his homeland. Karm's second "home" can be Morgan's kingdom. He may have even lived there unknown for much time before it was discovered that Rìkrǫdd had roosted within their borders. On Bonds: It is my understanding that Bonds are something you're trying to fulfill, rather than something that has already taken place (thus marking them off and writing in a new one). Which makes the bonds for Morgan's class read a bit strangely. Would that mean I'd have to become a citizen under his rule and leave in order to fulfill it? At any rate... __________________________________________________ You know something the others don’t, something beneficial. Maybe it’s a weakness of these creatures, maybe it’s something about this evening or area, or maybe it’s something about their plan that they wouldn’t want you to know. Maybe it’s something else altogether. Karm leaves little to chance. The old wizard chose this battleground. He spent painstaking hours drawing up the rituals that would trap them once entering this room. His old pupil had grown powerful himself, but relied too much on his dark servants. Here, in a confined space with sturdy companions surrounding him, their pursuers would fall. But there is yet something unexpected: standing so close to him, and yet they still search for something. Perhaps it is not Karm they are hunting? |
