Legend of Ransera

Posted: **Mon Dec 09, 2019 6:10 pm**

18th of Frost, Year 119

He outstretched his hand, and touched the flame that burned before him. It was hot and resistant to the sway of the wind, and most of all it could not feed or be stoked. It was static, remaining exactly where it was, the place he'd called it to land on and to burn for as long as was consciously desired. He had to admit that even though the Beacon warmed him, the chill of the surrounding winds had lessened his mobility, and fragmented his focus. The fire before him now was, if anything, a deterrent to keep him sane.

Taelian stepped back, holding firm on the balls of his feet, extending his legs outward on each side as he moved into ready stance. He stood by a river on a cliff-faced edge, the stone he walked on covered in moss and weeds that had found a way to bury themselves within the cracks. Taelian liked the smooth surface of the stone; he'd removed his shoes and danced along the platform, almost certain that doing so helped him in moving with more alacrity. The Siltori was still trying to figure out his own style -- how he liked to fight, and on what terms, and where. If he was to hunt Dranoch among these forests, he would need to learn to fight by his lonesome, and lure his foes into conditions more favorable.

He found that these precipitous areas - like along a river's edge - were far from favorable for him. He did not have the same precision or dexterity a Dranoch would, and he was prone to fumbling and falling. Right now was about learning to transition each movement fluidly into another, without losing balance, regardless of the flow of the movement before. Even a sliding kick or a long descent would need to be transitioned, perhaps into a role or an immediate upward recovery. Taelian tried to do so with a slide against the floor, though distracted by the slight burn of the stone against his skin, he stopped in place and grumbled a complaint.

The Siltori rose, patting off the back half of his pants and attempting to swipe away at the dust on the fabric of his shirt. The Siltori stepped backward and attempted to return to proper position, moving into a supposedly acrobatic stance, only to notice a sudden shifting in the ground beneath him. The large stone platform began to tilt forward, and Taelian was immediately thrown off of his footing. He began to slide toward the cliff face, and in his panic his response was unfortunately delayed. He fell to the ground and attempted to clutch the stone with his fingernails, clawing into the nearest available gap, but by then his feet had fallen off of the ledge and in a short series of seconds, Taelian had been plunged into the violence of the river below.

He landed on a large object and plunged it down with him. Trying to register what he felt, he could only compare it to the texture of a large aquatic animal, like a fish or worse -- a predator. Unrestrained panic ensued. His arms flailed for a few short moments before he saw the shape of the entity before him, his fears distorting his perception. Taelian began to draw his blade, but before he could pull it from its sheathe he had been pushed down to the sandy floor by the river's current, and in that moment his breath escaped him.

He gagged and instinctively attempted to yell, though this only allowed more water to enter through his mouth and into his lungs. Taelian closed his lips immediately, attempting to refocus his view, though at the edge of his peripheral he started to discern what the entity he'd fallen onto actually was. It looked... like a blue person, and with that acknowledgment all of his fears grew marginally worse. Vethcairn?

Posted: **Mon Dec 09, 2019 7:35 pm**

Kalzasi had been a tad more...overwhelming than Lorelei had planned. The rough trip in and the immensely different culture left her feeling really drained. It was so far from home, so far from the open seas and the salty air she had grown accustomed to. Even the wine was different, more bitter and harsh as the North was proving to be. It somehow felt less whimsical even, like the people of this city cared more about counting farthings and bills than actually enjoying life. They built such strange and pointed buildings and placed people in hierarchical systems that left many feeling stuck where they started.

Back at home? You could be anything. All it took was the dedication to get there. No one cared if you were high born or low born or left born or right. Each Druskai had the chance to get their own ship and sail it wherever the winds would take them. Even though it had only been but a few weeks Lorelei was feeling homesick. She had made her way from a particularly dive-y tavern, taking the bottle of booze she had purchased with her. Singing songs the sailors taught her she made her way to nowhere in particular until she came across a river.

It brought her a comfort, standing there on the edge listening to the water rush over rocks and twist around corners. Her hair tumbled forth as she leaned towards the water, gazing at her smudged reflection. Fingers hovered just above the river, barely breaking surface tension. A faint smile given and mirrored back and Lorelei knew what she had come here for.

She rose to her feet, not bothering to wipe away the caked mud at her knees and hands. Shouldering off her coat and letting it pool at her feet Lorelei began to undress. The air was cool here, much moreso than down south. That chill was nearly enough to sober her up as the excitement started overtaking her. Short work was made of the rest of her garb and Lorelei was digging through her bag. Her fingers felt around the sack until it felt the familiar scaled suit she was looking for.

Lorelei slipped on the suit, rolling it up her legs and body. It took longer than usual, what with her fumbling fingers trying to stretch and pull the unusual leather into place. This was a swim suit designed by her people for swimming in cooler waters. It was made from fish scales, leather, and wool. At her neck the wool poked out, same for her wrists and ankles. She limbered up briefly, anticipating the shock of cold that would hit her. Muscles would seize up and the breath would be stolen right from her lungs if she wasn't ready.

Lorelei stacked her things underneath a tree and ran for the river's edge. With a mighty push she leaped and went into a dive. Hands pressed together and head tucked she sliced through the water neatly. Instinctively her fingers and feet began webbed. Reaching out she cut through the water and let the river do most of the work. The icy water was immensely refreshing and knocked Lorelei free of what remaining drunken stupor she had arrived with. The familiar ache in her muscles from pulling herself through the waters was a welcome one.

It took her a second to realize the current was growing stronger. She had yet to come up for air and the white foam building over boulders and river rocks went unseen by her. It wasn't until she popped her head up that Lorelei realized how far from where she started she had come. There barely was time to contemplate a path back to her gear before something crashed directly on top of her. She blew out from her nose as hard as she could before being ripped below the surface.

Lorelei kicked at whatever it was and pushed away to free herself from its grasp. When she righted herself a man came in to view, grasping at the hilt of his blade. A pit of dread welled up in her stomach. Her crossbow. How stupid of her to leave her crossbow behind in a foreign country.

And then the river shoved them both downward. Lorelei didn't fight it and instead relaxed her body, using her hands to keep herself oriented. Her eyes pierced the medium between them and there was a sudden change to the theme of this encounter.

He sucked in a whole mouthful of water. From this close she could see his pupil's dilate as the fear of death hit him. Lorelei's webbed feet hit the ground and dug in. With a thrust the woman launched herself. She looped an arm through Talien's and tugged him with all her strength upward. With steady strokes she swam the two of them to the surface.

Lorelei was breathing heavy with the effort of towing someone who weighed what felt like nearly a hundred pounds more than she. She reminded herself to let the river carry her and focused on cutting diagonally until their legs scraped against the river bank. Heaving and dragging Lorelei pulled the waterlogged man up.

"Do me a favor and don't stab me, okay?"

She crawled around and knelt beside Taelian. Lorelei cocked her arm back and gave the man an open palm smack on the back.

"Alright big guy, let it all out."

Posted: **Thu Dec 12, 2019 8:39 pm**

Contrary to what a Vethcairn would have done, the sea-skinned woman swam over to Taelian as he began to flail from the intake of water into his lungs, snatching him with the underside of her arm as she forcefully propelled herself - and him - to the river's surface. The current raged but she managed to push past it somehow, outmaneuvering the tide with her own diagonal motions towards the lightly sanded shore. Taelian was brought to the water's edge, lain upon the ground. The woman began to speak, though with water in his ears and dizziness overcoming him, he did not hear what she said. She began to step forward, invoking a shred of hesitation, and then knelt over him. A firm palm clapped his back, knocking the water from his lungs as he coughed it out in a furious fit.

And he coughed for a little while longer. First to get the remaining shred of water out, then because he felt ill -- then because the texture of what he had swallowed was grating on his throat. The Siltori felt nauseous and out of breath, but he was alive. It was difficult to imagine considering the unexceptional nature of what he had just been doing -- training on a large rock -- but he had almost died, and the Druskai woman before him had saved his life.

And she spoke the Common tongue, which - maybe - meant that she wasn't a Vethcairn. The ones he'd met had only screamed threateningly in some vile approximation of Eldhan.

"Thank you," he spoke, with a diluted voice. The man attempted to properly sit straight, leaning forward using his core, as his arms felt exhausted from the wild swinging they had been performing as his meager attempt to swim. Still, the center of his chest surprisingly hurt. A lot of things did that he did not expect to.

"I'm surprised you didn't stab me through the neck, swim me up to the river's edge and loot my corpse. You don't tend to get much else from Druskai around here. Or anywhere, really..." he quietly added. The Korkann weren't significantly better than their Northern peers in being thieving savages. They were less brutal, less evil or otherwise maligned, but the MO was largely the same. Kill and steal. It didn't matter whose child you were, that you were a child at all; or the father or mother of children, or a husband or wife. They had no home to go to, and they needed to kill in order to live. So they did.

"Why are you here?" he asked. "It's strange to see a Druskai swimming through the inland rivers alone. Are you foraging for your tribe, or... something?" He knew surprisingly well how they operated, given the northern Remedy often contended with them due to their raids of Sil-Elaine's interior. That was Vethcairn, of course, but he hadn't ruled out the possibility. She could have simply been a cultured or well-read Vethcairn, perhaps even rescuing him only to further extend his suffering. No -- he supposed that didn't make sense. Maybe because he was a Siltori, and Lotheric was soft on his kind...? Perhaps, but that hadn't stopped them before.

He supposed it was equally strange for him to be here. He was from Silfanore, after all, and no one with any good judgment even tried to leave the city. The Druskai was - if anything - the exemplar of normalcy. But that didn't convince him to take his hand off of the hilt of his blade.

Taelian did not feel well, but he felt that he needed to stand. He began to throw his weight into his legs, attempting to gather himself off the floor and obtain any lost belongings from his fall.

Posted: **Sun Dec 15, 2019 9:48 am**

Lorelei was keenly aware of her apparent disadvantage here. Sitting only in the sleek suit designed for cooler waters she was entirely disarmed of any weaponry. Her crossbow was safely entombed within her pack, bolts loyally resting at its side. Even the bottle she had brought would have been better than nothing. As the silverelf sat upward and cautiously grabbed the pommel of the sword belted to his side Lorelei stiffened. Her eyes flickered to the ground before returning to meet his gaze. Smooth river rocks only. Should she have let him drown?

There was little surprise at the abject racism portrayed by someone towards her people. The thing about it was that Taelian did have a point. Druskai were every bit as vicious as he thought. Hells, even she herself had been party to raids up and down the coasts to the south. It wasn’t even more than a handful of days ago that she had repelled an attack by the type of Druskai who terrorized this area and anywhere else along the northern reaches. So it was that she did not blame him for his first reaction, it merely hardened her resolve to prove otherwise.

“Well I wasn’t exactly expecting to find anyone out here. If I wanted to try and murder anyone it wouldn’t be a lone man who was doing a perfectly good job of murdering himself. As long as you don’t try stabbing me through the neck I promise not to do the same. Veth’cairn aside, we are all cut from the same cloth, no?”

She gestured towards his ears, and then to her own pointed ones. The Siltori had just as bloody a culture as the Druskai, perhaps even moreso. The reason for what they did had much to do with their lot in life. Born to the seas as a warring people, both versions of her kind had to fight to survive. There was no place in the world for them, so they carved one out. Then through a series of godly shenanigans their kind were irrevocably altered.

The Siltori were far from the jovial people she grew up with. Had she not spent so much time traveling with a colorful cast of individuals she may have never known the pieces of their history Lorelei always found so intriguing. These particular kinds of elves had faced an immense tragedy at the hands of the Sundering. They had been unlucky enough to practically be next door to where it all went down. A cataclysmic event of that size was bound to leave scars, which it most certainly did.

They were a people poisoned by magic. Veth’cairn monsters

As Taelian questioned her motives Lorelei rose to a stand. Next to him she was thinner, longer in the limb-to-torso ratio though ultimately shorter. She offered a hand to him as a show of peace. Should he take it he would be pulled up, if not Lorelei would let it linger for a moment before dropping her arm to her side.

“In a sense, I am here for my tribe. For my people, really. All of them, even the ones who would have plunged their blades into your neck.”

Deliberately leaving her true purpose here vague, Lorelei would begin picking her way back up river. She was suddenly feeling quite exposed without some form of protection. Since they both had strayed from their starting places she assumed Taelian would be following.

“What about you? Swim practice?”

She walked ahead, looking over her shoulder with a smirk at his earlier flailing. As a Druskai swimming was second nature. It was pretty comical now, thinking about how silly he had looked while panicking beneath the river’s surface. Lorelie was biting back a laugh figuring, as most people would be, Taelian would take great offense at her poking too sharply at his pride. Best to save the heckling until she was sure he wouldn't try to run her through with his sword.

Posted: **Thu Feb 06, 2020 5:10 am**

T

he Tumble

XP: 8/8 {3 Can be used for Sigilic Pyromancy}

Sigilic Pyromancy: Maintaining the form of a flame
Sigilic Pyromancy: Attaching a fire to a rigid surface
Blades: Dancing around something with circular movements
Blades: Strafing
Blades: Mobile Stance
Blades: Keeping Traction
Acrobatics: Backstepping
Acrobatics: Stance is important

Comments: Ashame this one was cut short but was still a nice interaction between both pcs. Lorelie if you wish to claim knowledges and XP just reach out to me through pm and ill get yours done too!

Legend of Ransera

The Tumble

The Tumble

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Re: The Tumble

Re: The Tumble