Oops, looks like Larissa can't be made under the gun-rare or guns-heard of rules, as gunslingers don't exist. Gunslingers can only be made with 'guns emerging' rules. Oh well, good luck with the game!
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Never mind, Forgot it's level 1. She gets one for free, that'll have to do.
I'm assuming Larissa can have built her own guns, using the gunsmithing rules then? Similar to how mages can craft their own equipment during character creation if they have craft magic item feats?
What level of guns are we using? Primitive, advanced? Guns everywhere, guns rare, guns unheard of?
I'd like to throw in my hat if you're ok with a CN pistol wielding gunslinger? (To be built)
Larissa grins, and moves to her feet in one fluid motion. "Excellent! We have people to beat and time to kill." She says, then leans forward and stares Alys in the eyes. "Or rather, the other way around. Remember cookie, half-way to hell and back, from here." As she says 'here' she digs a fingernail into the table top, leaving a score in the wood. Then she moves to the nearest doorway, unfurling her wings. "C'mon big and sour looking..." She jerks her head at Reghar.
"There's only two bounties in this tavern, Alys dear. And I'm not supposed to take yours." She grins, then points at Reaghar. "You'll do, you look like more use in a fight than Squealy does. Your patron is letting me... borrow... one of your people, for a job they have for me. Mostly so they can confirm I did the job. Not that I wouldn't, but it's paperwork stuff, independent verification of completion blah blah pinfeathers." She waves a hand. "Anyway, your patron heard you were back in town, and with less than half the toys you were sent out with, and was concerned. So you should meet them tomorrow on an old boat that will be about halfway between here and the worst possible place in the isles." She winks. "I'm sure you'll figure it out."
The woman doesn't say anything until the musicians finish, then she sits up in her chair, ignoring the musicians, who leave the smallish stage and move quickly but at a walk to the exit and vanish, not stopping to pick up the coins on the stage. "Ooh, Alys! You're alive! I didn't expect that! It's so nice to see you managed to keep your head on your shoulders! And all the other bits attached too!" She looks to Reaghar and Connor, and licks her lips. "Oooh, he's yummy looking, you nasty girl you, running around with two boys." She leans toward Connor. "I bet he squeals doesn't he?" She winks at Alys and then leans back in her chair. "So, who's tall nasty and tasty, and who's short tasty and squealy?"
The Lamia hisses. "Be careful, ssstone man. Have you not notissed? Thossse who are alike are banded together?" She waves her tail tip to various groups. "The farther you get from your ssstarting platform, the lesss like you they are." She nods toward a platform in the distance, where the group seems to be a mixture of humans and clockwork. "Sssee, they require traversssing three ssstairsss from your ssstarting possssition." She then points her tail toward a group even farther away, and in the distance Cale can make out what look like trolls and humans and orcs, all wearing odd looking armor and carrying firearms. One troll looks like it has legs made of metal clockwork and carries a gun as big as a petite human. "And finally... there..." Another 5 stairs beyond them, she indicates a group made of what looks like moving humanoid crystals that bleed light. A purple haze is around the garish crystals. "We ssstarted to go visssiting assss well, but desssided againsssst it after we notisssed the dissstinct patterning of lifeformsss."
The lamia smiles. "I am Larissa, but I am called 'Deathnote'." And her tail tip vibrates, the rattle modified so that it is a wind instrument, an odd haunting piping fills the air, almost a funeral dirge. The Lamia's voice rises in song, the language unfamiliar to Cale as she zooms about, her body going through contortions as she snakes around people, hourglasses, up and over pillars, even coiling around a bridge defying a second death. Her body finally slows down a blur, and the Lamia is barely winded. The entire time her voice was raised in a hunting song and her arms blurred into a symphony of death.
Larissa laughs, a peal of laughter that would normally echo off the rafters, but is instead contained to a small area by the strange place. "Foolisssh ssstone man. Ssshhhee already gave you her name. If you are too foolissshh to remember it, that isss your doom." The lamia laughs, licking her lips. "If one of my clan were in your pitsss, you would not have sssurvived... nor would the sssity, for my clan would have ssslaughter your ssssity to the lasssst child for sssuch an affront. Know thissss ssstone man, if ever you ssseee one of my kind with her weaponssss drawn...." And the lamia suddenly surges in size, and four more arms appear from the hair that draped down her back. All six arms wield a different weapon, and flames flicker in her mouth. "...you are already dead... again..." And then she laughs again, a pure sweet tinkling sound that doesn't mesh well with the blur of blades as her arms move in piston like motions swinging the weapons around at the air, in a showy, but non-threatening manner.
The lamia rolls her eyes. "The best of you is less than the least of me and mine."
"I was on a ship hunting doomwhales, and a whole freaking pod of them started ramming our ships in a storm. Last thing I saw was a 200 ft whale breaching above me while I clung to a flipped over life boat." "I was in my house when there was a loud crackboom, and when I looked out, the volcano had erupted. There was a lot of noise and heat and then I was here." "I went to sleep with a really good looking woman I picked up in a tavern while pretending to be a commoner. I woke up here."
The centaur looks furious. "I was hunting the creature that killed my daughter, Gail. I was caught in a sandstorm while racing through the desert to the town I was told he retired to after killing her." The centaur looks like she's barely restraining her rage.
The lamia laughs. "Who said I was alone. Had my whole clan. I just got unlucky enough to get my ankle caught under the dragon's jaw when it died." The centaur looks at Abbas. "I am Rel Goldpelt." The centaur says. The humans pipe up with their names. "Erick Bohnstiel" "Trudi Mastrin" "Kale Morger." "Wil Tranner."
The lamia hisses. "I killed a dragon. Unfortunately, it'ssss mate blassssted me with fire for my actionsssss." She grins, showing off needle sharp teeth. "It'ssss blood tasssted good before I wasss hit by fire."
A dark haired lamia with features like an elf hisses as Cale speaks. Her scales are black and red with bright differentiations. SHe wears a set of bright red armor on her torso. "Hsss... Sstone Man! Do not sssneak up on me. Not sssssafe for you." The lamia draws herself up to her full height (about 13 feet) and looks down. "We are.. the walking dead... or ssssso it ssssseeemssss." Her tail tip waves to indicate the others. It appears the lamia is the spokesnake for the group, as nobody else speaks, only hangs back and looks at Cale.
"No, actually I was just supposed to watch and make sure you got free and let your contacts know where to find you. But honestly, I don't have 3 days to muck around following you both. I have places to go and people to kill." She answers the half-elf. Unlike most people, she seems not to care that he has no wings. Then again, she is not like most people. There's an air of heavily restrained madness about her. "I figure if I get you where you're going, I can get back to my job." Then she pauses, and looks thoughtful. "Then again, if I just kill you both now, then I won't have to follow you or lead you anywhere, which is even faster..." She looks thoughtful for a good minute, then shrugs. "No, Daddy would probably just make me go kill another strix and chop it up and put it in someone else's apartment to frame them and make me follow them as they escape again. I've spent way too much time on this as it is. I mean, it was fun chopping the bastard up, the nerve of him, spying on Daddy. But there's only so much fun you can have repeating yourself over and over again." She says aloud, sounding as if she's made up her mind. "So, are you recovered enough to tow the skiff yet?" She asks Selvan directly.
"Woah, you are like so pathetic..." The mocking female voice comes from thin air, about 50 feet away. As Sammark looks around, a portion of the horizon seems to distort and take on the shape of a winged Elvavian. The first thing Sammark see's is a shark like grin that slowly expands into lips, then a nose and chin, then finally dark hair as a head appears where before there was only horizon. The distortion slowly fades away, and a dark haired, pale skinned woman with dark eyes and shark like teeth is floating there, her wings out, but not flapping. She simply floats. Nearly skin tight black leather armor adorns her body and matches her jet black wings. Her wings adjust, and she zooms closer to the ship, her arms crossed under her breasts. "First that one pushing winged people off a ship, then you not able to heal him with either a dorje or a first aid kit." She dimples, eyes dancing merrily. The woman yawns. "Most boring escape I've ever watched." She floats slowly closer, until she's by the skiff. "So hand over the dorje already, I'm not supposed to interfere, but I'm also tired of watching. And I already killed the guy who was tugging this thing around, so it's not like they'll miss you for another couple of hours."
She holds the dorje against Selvan's forehead, and the elf's jaw jerks and pops back into place, the bloodied splits in the skin sealing over as he regains 3 hp. "Like the man always says, wakey wakey, eggs and bakey." She says in a singsong to the Elvavian.
"Names are dangerous, it's easier to track something if you can name it." The woman says with the automatic response of a meme memorized early and often. "Within the guild, I am Deathnote." She dimples as she looks at Alys. "And you'll be... hmm... Purple Lotus." "You made the list because you are uniquely qualified. For this position, we needed someone who was capable of killing, but still had enough scruples that she can pass for legitimate in public." Then she laughs. "The fact we can hold a sword over your throat is a major bonus too of course." "If you want to become a bounty hunter on your own time, that's fine. I do it myself, as you saw. Helps with party funds. The guild specifically only kills people we've been paid to, or those with specific orders. Certain members of the guild are exempted from this restriction." She smiles sweetly, obviously indicating she is such a one. "You're exempt too, you can pretty much kill anyone you want. On the other hand, we don't break you out of jail or come catch you if they clip your wings and toss you off the edge either."
The assassin, looking bored, begins to count off on one hand, tagging a finger with each touch. Index Finger - "If I knew where to look, I'd go kill them myself, and I'd be turning in your head for the reward." Middle Finger - "I have no clue about the report, just write up something that looks official, I guess. I was just told to tell you to write up a report." Ring Finger - "There are two... hmmm... I'd call them cannon fodder... But I've been told I tend to be to blunt and honest about people. They'll be escaping from prison any day now, I'm told. Once they're in it. Oh, that reminds me, I need to go kill a strix and dismember it in someone's apartment. I have just the strix to use to. And best of all, he's got a broken wing and arm so he'll be extra easy to dismember." Pinky Finger - "You're in the bloody capitol of the world! If you can't find a tailor, you're an idiot." She huffs a bit on that last one. Getting up, she makes her way to leave, and then stops. "Oh, I almost forgot." She goes to the wall, and pushes 3 knots in two different boards in a specific order. Part of the wall pops free, and she opens a secret door. "Storage room with emergency escape hatch. I have to go make a big mess in someones house. You make yourself at home, and see what you can find out. I'm sure tweedle dee and tweedle dum will be along shortly. Just have to arrange for them to find their way here."
Alys doesn't find anything in the journal that she understands. There are some diagrams and what look like maps, but the language is written in a strange rune that she doesn't recognize. By this time, there's a bang downstairs. "Alright Alys, murderers dead, let's go!" The cheery assassin sighs a bit as she sees that nothing has been taken from the dead bodies. "Shtock! You left everything! You didn't even take the change box!" She calls out from below, rather upset. Then she comes into Alys' room. "Oh! I see, at least you stole something. Excellent! So much easier if you're going to actually try!" She then leads Alys to the roof entrance. The tavern is a typical port tavern, entrances at ground and roof level, due to the influx of grubs on sailing vessels. "Well, off we go! Council Enclave Next Stop!" She calls merrily, and takes off at a rapid clip, making Alys struggle to keep up for the first hour. After that, she cuts back to a normal pace as the duo swoop and glide and fly through the mountains toward the island capital.
After traveling with the assassin for a couple of days, during which she alternately chatters about things as mundane as makeup and food, and as esoteric as where to shove a blade to cause the most pain before death, the elvavian lands on a building in the Council Enclave. "Ok, so, this is where you live. It's our new Outreach Offices. You are now officially the Assassin's Guild Head of Community Outreach." The elvavian says as she leads Alys into the building. The offices she leads her into are old, but servicable. There's an office with a desk and empty book shelves, 3 bedrooms, a small kitchen, and a meeting room. It looks like this might have been a small import/export business at one point. "Your keys..." She tosses the ring full of brass keys on the desk. "Your first assignment is to find whatever moron is smuggling magic items through the docks, kill them, and report in. Even the Assassin's Guild can't stomach Arcanists." The elf makes a face of disgust. "Who can get on with business when the city randomly explodes?" She then sits down on a dusty old couch, her wings drapping back over the back of it. "Ok, questions?"
Larissa looks pouty. "You don't like my teeth?" She asks, sounding a bit petulant. But then she shrugs. "Your loss. No, you can keep your boring square teeth if you want." The elvavian stands, and proceeds to walk around the tavern, with a small round monocle in front of her eye. She stoops and picks up various items off people, from guns to rings to amulets, dropping each one in her backpack. When she's done, she finally picks up her leather pack, slinging it around and under her wings, the straps sliding up her arms to her shoulders. Like all Atalantian packs, it rides low on the back, near the kidneys, to leave room for the wings to function. Despite the near dozen severed heads in it, no blood drips from it. Most likely then a Backpack of Holding, with it's own pocket dimension. "Ok, now, let's get cleaned up. Can't be seen in public like this." She says aloud, although whether she's talking to Alys or herself is debatable. Her psychoreactive skin shudders, and the blood on her sheds itself off, like water off a duck. When it's done, she looks perfectly clean. Alys of course, has no such skin to do her cleaning, so the elf reaches behind the bar and drags the soapy water bucket the barman kept for cleaning the bar over and plants it on the table with a thunk. "Here, you clean up, and if you want, you can rob them of whatever they have on them. You look like you're broke. You might want to check the bar, I'm sure he has a box to make change with." The elvavian walks to the door, before pulling 3 crystals out of her pocket. She spits on each one and tosses it on the floor. Before it hits, the crystal morphs into a copy of her, complete with backpack and wings. "My butt's not that big, is it?" She asks plaintively, of the third duplicate, which shrugs in response. "I'll be back, I've got to go kill some more people and gather some more heads. You've got 10 minutes to steal.. or salvage, if you prefer... whatever you want from the tavern. I got all the good stuff, but you can whatever is left." The quadruplets then all four exit the tavern in a burst of feathers. Outside, dirge and wedding music can be heard faintly, along with the cursed roar of the elvavians enchanted guns. Other gunfire is heard too, the more conventional type.
"Of course, what do you think the I am, some psychopathic murder hobo?" She says, sounding slightly offended. Standing up, she moves to the man who had moved first to flee the tavern. She drags him up by his collar. "This is Salvani 'tel Resalvia. This dog shtocker decided to set up his own guild. No rules, just murder anyone for any reason." She spits in his face and drags the corpse to the bar, where she begins to gut and dismember it, defacing it and making a mess. "We ungh... stupid idiot... we can't have every moron with a gun.. ugh... starting up a guild whenever and wherever can we?" She finishes dismembering him, and begins to place his body parts around the room, fussing with them. "So, it was my job to send a message. He was running his new guild out of this tavern." The woman turns a bright smile on Alys. It's marred by the blood dripping from the corners of her mouth. "You were an entirely fortuitous finding! I had no idea you were down here. You're on my list of potential recruits for a new guild Community Outreach program. You have no idea how happy I am I don't have to track you or one of the others down." She smiles happily as she takes great care in setting the dead man's head on the exact center spot of the bar, his open eyes staring at the entrance to the tavern. "Really, I think this outreach thing is nothing but bat guano, but Daddy says it's good to make friends with the Council, when we can." She shrugs. "I'd just kill them if they got in my way, but Daddy makes the rules. So, what do you think? Good pay? Good dental plan? Go to new places, meet new people?"
The woman giggles playfully, then begins to walk amongst the corpses. She sometimes takes out a sheaf of papers and looks through them while studying a corpse. Sometimes ripping clothes open to look for birthmarks. Under her breath, as she chops off heads to put in the backpack, she mutters. "100 gold... 50 gold... oooh, 300 gold..." Each severed head goes into the backpack. The waitress get's kicked a couple of times. "Worthless! Why couldn't you have murdered someone?" The elf complains, spitting on the corpse. She ignores all of Alys' questions until she's done decapitating half the tavern corpses. She then grabs a plate of blood splattered fried chicken off one table, and a bottle of meade from behind the bar. She sits at Alys' table, and offers her a blood splattered chicken leg. "I needed to talk to you in private, and there was money here to be made." The elf says, perfectly reasonable her tone of voice indicates. When Alys declines the food, the elf shrugs and tears into the chicken leg, washing it down with meade straight from the bottle. "Do you know you're currently worth 750 gold pieces? Your clan wants you alive though. You're only worth 400 gold dead." She explains matter of factly. "Of course, if your father doesn't wake up from that coma, or if he dies, those prices will go up and reverse I'm sure." The woman grins, showing off teeth that look more like a sharks than an elvavians, triangular and white, perfect for biting into things, like the chicken leg she strips clean to the bone. Chewing, swallowing, and gulping down more meade, she continues. "So, I'm kind of torn. I can make a decent profit turning you in now. Or I can hold you until the geezer kicks it, and make more. Or I can take your head, go help the geezer along, and sell your head for more after he's dead." She throws the bone at the waitress's corpse and grabs a chicken breast, ignoring the blood on it as she tears into it. After another round of swallowing and meade, she grins that predatory grin. "Or, you can take advantage of the Guild's new recruitment policy. I swear it's a once in a lifetime offer. Good pay, great dental plan."
Alys had been on the run for weeks now, hiding from anyone that looked like a bounty hunter or police. She wasn't even sure she was being hunted, but finding out would be bad, almost either way. She'd ran without thought at first, flying as hard as her wings would take her, weeks on the run. Her clothes were dirty now, and ragged, her few bits of equipment well dinged up now from life on the run. She'd finally found her way down toward Kintasa, the smaller of the two inland seas on the Big Island. She's sitting in a hole of a dive of a tavern in the port town of Maslatta. The town is a small port town owned outright by Clan Resalia. Most of the people in the tavern wield pistols on their hips, and she's had to pull her psiblade twice now to avoid being forced upstairs to a room for some 'fun' by a local. As she sits at table eating, keeping a furtive eye on the rest of the room, a pale face suddenly drops directly into her view. A half-elf woman leans forward, grinning oddly. "Now Alys, let's not be moving more than an inch if we want to be surviving the next five minutes. There's a good girl." The half-elf tells her with a grin. White teeth show in her lips, which suddenly grow blood red as the psychoreactive skin she wears stops hiding her true appearance. Like a dolphin pushing through the surface of the water, her features punch through the skin, her pale skin growing even more pale, her formerly black eyes turning a dark purple that seem to glow with barely restrained madness. Her clothes change from the same sort of dingy travel tunic that Alys wears to a jet black leather armor that is skin tight. Huge black feathered wings grow from her back. She throws her head back, eyes up, a look of rapture on her face as music begins to fill the air, and an over sized revolver appears in each of her hands. Each has a barrel over a foot and a half long, and the bore is easily half again as big as any normal revolver, as if each were chambered to fire shotgun rounds. The one in the right is long and sinister, black as night with silver trim, and it emits a funeral dirge as the girl begins to cry crimson tears of blood. The gun in the left hand is long and sinister, silver with onyx trim, and it begins to emit a wedding march in oddly harmonic counterpoint to the funeral dirge. Around the bar, people stop talking as the music fills the air. Several suddenly look panic'd, and begin to run for the windows and doors. These are the first people to die. The woman begins to whirl in place, her feet stomping out a dance in her heeled boots that somehow matches the mixed tempo of the two guns. Her wings whirl around her, black feathers peeling loose to fill the air in a flurry of black snow as the two guns begin to bark thunder in time to their songs. The black gun belches for an evil black bolt that takes the fastest of the people moving, punching through his torso and sending his insides splattering over the front doors of the tavern. The silver gun belches out an equally loud roar and takes a woman in the breast, blowing her chest open as she tries to leave through the back door. Things quickly go insane after that. People draw weapons and begin firing at the whirling black winged woman, but she spins and dances killing someone with every shot, and firing one shot every second. Bullets whizz past Alys's head, one thunks into the table next to her hand, sending splinters into her arm. Even with that pain, she can't move. Her body trembles from fear and adrenaline and anger, but it doesn't move. The woman's massive revolvers never seem to run out of the cursed ammo, and in less than 20 seconds, everyone in the tavern is dead, or slowly dying from their wounds. The black haired black winged woman comes to a stop in front of Alys, and slowly bows, holding her weapons out at right angles from her body, bloody tears flowing steadily down her face. Outside, there is no sound, as if everyone in range of hearing that horrible symphony of sound and death had raced away in terror. The two guns vanish as the woman finally stops moving, and the sound vanishes. She unlashes a backpack from her back, a large black affair that she sets down heavily on the table Alys sits at. "Good girl! It would have been awfully inconvenient if you'd moved. I'd have had to kill you, and that would have been a pain." She smiles sweetly, licking at the blood that drips down her face. She's spattered with blood from her nearly 20 victims. The tavern's floor is coated in a rapidly expanding pool of blood, and she seems to be happier than a school girl who's gotten a new pony for her birthday. "Mmmm, now you stay right there while I clean this up." She winks playfully, and then grabs the head of the person sitting at the next table, and looks at his face. "Oooh, Marvillin 'tel Mintakia, he's worth 400 gold." She pulls a wicked looking mithral blade off her hip and hacks his head off in one blurring movement. She drops the head into the black backpack, giving Alys a view of the man's still open eyes before it vanishes into the leather backpack. Alys only realizes she can move when her hand goes to her mouth in horror. |