Tamaranis

It wasn't that James didn't appreciate the kindness of his employer, or understand his desire to see old friends, not at all. It wasn't that the precence of wealthy individuals made him uncomfortable, in fact it usually went the other way around. The reason James didn't like parties on this scale was, despite his age, largely in charge of attending the horses of any guests. This might not have been so bad if he had others working under him, but such was not the case. Usually the work required of him was minimal, but when events like this rolled around, he was kept inexcusably busy cleaning stables, feeding horses, watering horses, ensuring horses got their exercise, etc. James liked horses and all, just not a lot of them all at once. Of course, maybe it was best to keep busy, he reflected as he began the process of freeing another pair of horses from their carriage and leading them to the stable. Word tended to travel among servants, and he had learned his older brother would be in attendence. He didn't get along particularly well with that self-superior bag of hot air.

Huzzah! About the internet working, not about the broken pipe.

Alright... I'll be James Doyle. Youthful, exuberent, tactless, illiterate stableboy. Since Degenero and Matteo haven't picked characters yet, I can be their looked down on younger brother or something like that... Or older brother, but then they'd be pretty young to be werewolves, and we wouldn't want anyone immune from suspicion. Especially if they were the wolf.

I'm listening tonight! I mean it! ...I've been intended to listen to this for weeks, but now I'm going to do so.

You can write me down as "in" No real preference on setting, but I'll vote WoT because it's losing.

"I see you're here about the staff discount!" Sign me up!

Eh, I'll join. I'll do a better job this time, too. EDIT: Oh... this isn't the actual sign up thread...

Why... just today Katzaniel mentioned to me that she rather hoped she'd be promoted soon... Its almost as funny as the promotion post itself. But then again I have an odd sense of humor.

I see a bird-man (or woman) reach up to the sky with wings somewhat outstretched... ...and i don't have any amusing commentary to follow that up with.

Well they're mostly water and salt... not too hard to come by. ...I think there might be some proteins in there for the killing of bacteria and stuff, but your body can always make more of those, too.

I smashed my elbow with a snowshoe a lot harder than I though it was actually possible to hit something with a snowshoe yesterday... but I've got some of the feeling in my hand back now.

Ah yes, highschool. When I complained that I hated highschool, everyone said that I'd look back on it and miss it... ...I haven't yet.

I get to get up and go to work tomorrow morning... I wish my days off matched up with weekends more often.

Hmm, I think I'll check it out one of these days, if that's the case. I always found research rather irritating.

I dunno... AM is kinda neat... Maybe. I'm a little weary to start playing, because I'm kinda expecting doom to descend on the game again at any minute.

My theory on how promotions work is that all potentials are carefully scored, and a number of balloons containing a piece of paper with their name in it are placed on a board based on that score. I'm not sure how the scoring works, and I don't think the number of balloons to your score is a linear relationship. So we've got this board full of balloons with names in them. A collection of darts is fired at the board by some sort of automated dart gun with quite a bit of scatter (Throwing by hand wouldn't be fair or even) and if a balloon with your name is hit you get promoted. Okay, that's not my theory... but you never know.

How could we forget some one with such and penguiny sig?

Robby had reached Tel Reth a full week before the agreed upon date of the second meeting of the mercenary company. Just as he had known it would, his haste earned him nothing but a long wait. He didn’t particularly feel like wandering the woods, and fields surrounding Tel Reth aimlessly, hoping to run across bandits or a kitten stranded in a tree to occupy his time. Instead he searched for work as a labourer inside the city. The search didn’t go particularly well. Robby was short and slim enough to be an elf, and prospective employers weren’t willing to give him a chance. It would really just be something to pass the time anyway. Though Robby was low on funds, he wasn’t desperate to acquire money. Once the current mercenary job was complete he’d be either rich or dead, either way, money wouldn’t be a concern. Failing to find any work, he spent a great deal of time frequenting taverns. He was rarely popular there, however, because he was almost completely unwilling to spend any of his limited coin on food or drink. Usually he’d order a single ale, and drank only sparingly if at all. He would stay until he was told he wasn’t welcome, at which point he’d leave without a fuss. On his second night in Tel Reth Robby spent some money to rent a room at an inn for the night, but that was the only time he spent a night with a roof over his head. If he stayed in one place too long at night, the town guard would warn him against loitering, unless it was a slum. He had no particular inclination to spend his night in a slum, so Robby made a point of walking briskly through the streets for hours on end, aimless, but acting as if he had some specific destination in mind. Robby didn’t particularly attempt to stay in “respectable” neighbour hoods, and on two separate occasions attempts were made to relieve him of what little money he had. The first time he got into a scuffle with his aggressors that lasted a quarter of an hour, with neither party being injured. The would be robbers became increasingly worried the guard would arrive, and so Robby allowed them to have most of his money, “for making such a good effort of it.” The second time he was feeling less generous, and several limbs ended up broken, none of them his. On Robby’s fifth day in Tel Reth, his job search finally came to an end, though quite by accident. He’d spent his very last copper on a glass of ale that he hadn’t touched in the hour since he’d ordered it, and was occasionally chipping a comment or opinion into the animated discussion of a small group of farmers who’d come into the city to sell their crops and were taking advantage of the luxury of a Tavern before heading beginning their homeward journey. Robby considered his knowledge and interests to be fairly broad, but he was having a hard time participating in this particular conversation. Though he filed their eventual conclusion away in his mind, he didn’t really care what week was best to plant maize in a soil composition they described as “roamish.” The stories they told of villages being forsaken by God and so claimed by Hell, were of interest to him, however, and he tried to steer things in that direction. Around the same time Robby decided he wasn’t going to learn anything, he noticed an altercation taking place. A large, surly drunk, was holding a barmaid by the wrist and didn’t seem inclined to let go. As Robby watched, one noble fellow stepped to her defence, and the larger man’s fist sailed out and left him lying on the floor, incoherent. Other patrons were either less courageous or more familiar with the drunk’s strength, and no one else moved to interfere. With an exasperated sigh, Robby set down the ale that he didn’t particularly care for, stood up, and calmly walked across the tavern to where things were unfolding. The obstinate drunk didn’t register Robby as a threat until the much smaller man had seized his arm, and applied enough pressure to cause discomfort even through the fog in his mind. The drunk man’s reaction was instantaneous, and Robby had underestimated just how instantaneous. His enormous fist connected with Robby’s skull before he could completely move out of the way. Contrary to the expectations of observers, he staggered back a step and shook off the slight dizziness, instead of falling to the ground the way the last man to attempt playing hero had. The surly fellow didn’t at first recognize that this opponent had not collapsed the way the last one had. Once this dawned on him, he turned his attention completely to Robby and advanced, swinging both arms. For perhaps a minute Robby displayed amazing agility and completely evaded most of the belligerent drunk’s swings while trying to talk him down. The few that connected, and he was moving so fast that it almost seemed he must be letting them connect, didn’t affect him to nearly the extent the other patrons, now enthralled with the battle, thought they might. After that minute, Robby abruptly lost patience and probably lost quite a few people some money by driving at the centre of the other man’s torso. His fist connected very audibly, and the larger man seemed to curl up around the impact, then collapsed. Robby didn’t wait around for thanks or round two. He was walking out the door by the time the crowd realized the fight was over. Early the next day he happened to run into a dockmaster he’d sought work with, who happened to have witnessed the fight. So it happened that he was loading a barge, working with some of the same endless energy that had allowed him to make the journey to Tel Reth in so short a time, and wondering exactly where he was supposed to meet with Ugarte, when Bob found him. Bob, who would have stood nearly head and shoulders above the drunken ruffian Robby had disposed of and with width to match, walked into several other workers without breaking stride, and nearly knocked one into the river. When he reached Robby, who simply watched the careless display with mild curiosity, he made a grunting sound, and thrust a letter at him. Robby was about to ask where they were supposed to meet, but Bob had already turned around and was headed in the other direction, now given a wide berth by those he’d collided with previously. Robby broke the seal, and unfolded the slightly crumpled letter. He read it twice, and satisfied that he’d memorized it in sufficient detail, and discarded it. He dropped the act of becoming slightly exhausted by his efforts, and contributed to loading the barge in near record time, collected the few coins he’d earned, and went to meet with the other mercenaries.

Two spells simultaneously struck the ill-defined form of the creature Tamaranis was fighting. The first was a blast of the lighting that produced neither light nor heat. Tamaranis knew it would be ineffective in causing any lasting physical damage, but that wasn’t the point. He was only casting it so his opponent would realize the other spell. The other spell wasn’t nearly as flashy even as the dark lightning. It was completely invisible to even undead eyes under normal circumstances, but an archmage learns ways to see things. The second spell sent twisting cords of magic that had been the energies of a warding spell spiralling out into the night. Even so, Tamaranis could see the thick wall in place between the monster’s vital force and his lack thereof. Not nearly as sturdy as it had been, but still there all the same. He began formulating the next ward-breaking spell to throw against it. The creature shook off the effects of the dark lightning as if it had suffered no more than a sudden chill and swung it’s head forward, snapping with a jaw that seemed to reach out, independent from the rest of the skull’s movements. Tamaranis abandoned the swing he’d been taking but still had several teeth drag through his lower arm. He brought the side of the opposite hands down across the creatures eye, slicing in as if it had been a knife blade, then quickly retracted the limb in order to keep possession of it. The eye rolled a hundred and eighty degrees in the socket to reveal the other side in perfect working order, and the creature lashed out with both its forelimbs, knocking Tamaranis to the earth and trying to pin him there, but only catching a few links of what little mail armour he had left instead. The thing had been moving a little slower since Tamaranis had managed to blast a few pieces off it. It raised itself up on its hind legs, and Tamaranis took the moment to cast another harmless bolt of lightning and hopefully less harmless spell combination. Then he turned plane of the blade of his sword parallel to the earth and drove it into the monster’s knee. He managed to get some distance between it and himself as the leg buckled broke, then pulled itself back together, sans sword, as the creature regained it’s footing. In eagerness to destroy, the creature didn’t take into account the fact that there was no way the sword wielding vampire it was attacking could have regained his sword. It furiously tried to strike a suddenly faster opponent, finally succeeding, but only meeting slightly more resistance than would be offered by the smoke its target suddenly dissolved into. From a vantage point some distance in the air, but not so far up as to make observing the results of his magic difficult, Tamaranis blasted the creature again, and followed up with some flames possessing a demonic intelligence. That wall was getting very thin now. The creature propelled itself towards Tamaranis, using the wings it had not discarded, the surface of its body once against folding in on itself to extinguish the flames. It was too agile in the air, despite its reliance on wings, to avoid, so Tamaranis threw himself directly at it. The creature thrust an arm out, and into Tamaranis’ torso, but before it could tighten a fist around his innards he slammed both fists, augmented with forcebolts, into its throat. The manna stream wavered now even with that magic, but the creature fell several meters through the air before it could recover from the sudden impact. As it did, Tamaranis descended, faster than gravity alone would account for, to his sword. As a powerful but exhausted man finds himself relying on sheer determination to lift a weight he would normally lob through the air with casual ease, Tamaranis once again called up dark lightning to mask the spell he cast against the creature’s wards. He didn’t have time to collect his weapon before the creature was upon him. The dark lighting was largely dark because the light and heat produced by a regular lightning bolt are a waste of energy. The dark lightning is incredibly efficient. Despite that Tamaranis didn’t have the magical energy left to call upon it and attack a ward at the same time. The creature could probably feel the power behind his spells weakening. Tamaranis almost smiled at the thought of the perverse, unwitting joy the creature must be feeling at the thought of the troublesome quarry it was about to finally finish off. He couldn’t overcome this thing in a toe to toe melee, especially unarmed, so he didn’t try. Instead Tamaranis levitated to a great enough height to force the creature to stand on its hind legs to fight him, and thrust one open hand toward it’s chest as he called out the magical syllables to his ward-breaking spell one last time. His fingers embedded to a depth between the first and second knuckles, and he fastened his grip. The other hand seized the creature just under its chin, which promptly disappeared, and tried to push away it’s twisting maw. The creature seized Tamaranis with both claws, confident its greater strength would overcome and it could pull him into range of the rotating collection of blades that served as its teeth. Tamaranis completed the spell, and the wall came down. The creature might have been aware the spell this time, because it was not accompanied by a lightning ruse, but it didn’t matter. For the second time during this battle, the creature experience real pain, not the pain caused by an unwanted change in the shape of its body, but the pain that came with actually being injured. The things wards, natural or unnatural, were gone, and there was nothing separating it from the void. It’s vital force flowed in a towards the hand embedded in its body, but never reached Tamaranis. The void swallowed the power up, made it nothing, and a some manna was generated in the process. The creature’s initial response was to twist the tissue this vampire had foolishly embedded his own hand in and sever it. But there was nothing but numbness where it had been struck, and spreading out in a circle from the wound was an area where its flesh no longer possessed its regular motion. It struck at him with its claws, and transformed its wings to another set to strike faster. Tamaranis used the influx of manna as he received it. He kept both hands firmly attached to the creature and called out forcebolts with fantastic speed, using them to parry many of the attacks from the creature’s four “arms“. When it did manage to strike, he siphoned energy through that point of contact as well. The creature tried to flee, but death itself was literally closing in, and even the pang of terror it felt as it realized that lent it no strength. Then something entirely unexpected by both parties ripped through the forest where the fight had taken place. A powerful, de-animating magic. Tamaranis experienced a sensation like trying to balance on a narrow platform that was swinging in chaotic patterns above infinite nothing as he tried to keep his being correctly distributed across planes of existence. He wasn’t sure how long it took for the platform to stop moving, but when it did, the creature was gone.

OOC: I've been written out! Ah well, that's what I get for not posting, maybe I'll show up later at some critical moment, if no one objects. BIC: The illithid uprooted a tree with its tentacles, and used the to shear through the wood, displaying an even greater strength in those fearsome appendages than illithid's normally possessed. Hopefully the Incubus wouldn't attempting to melee it again. Then it perceived something, more minds approaching. They were unlike the minds of the beings that the illithid had currently encountered. They were brimming with righteous hate and a purpose. Though they were the minds of beings with psionic powers, they made no attempt to hide themselves, they wished their quarry to know they were coming and feel fear. They were the minds of a rrakkma band. They did not, of course, fully understand what they were hunting. The illithid felt some anxienty, but no fear in detecting them. They underestimated it, and it could easily destroy a handfull of rrakkma even without other illithids or even slaves to aid it. But still, they were powerful, and they were many. It could not defeat the entire rrakkma band. Perhaps humans of similar ability could be overcome, but there was no greater death in githzerai culture than to die as a rrakkma, spending one's life to destroy an illithid. Where humans would hestitate when they saw their allies fall, rrakkma would not. The illithid sent a thought of parting to the mortals and the demon it had encountered, and began to briskly walk away from them. There was no garauntee that they would side with it when the rrakkma band arrived, and if it tried to force their minds open and determine that, and they realized what it was doing, they would definately side with the rrakkma band. They were close now, at the dimensional membrane seperating the prime material from the astral. There was no way to escape through the physical realm, so the illithid launched itself from the prime material instead. The essence of its being hurtled past the rrakma. The illithid reassembled in what could nearly be called the heart of the astral plane. The astral was infinite, and so it had no true center, but this point was extreme seperated from the other planes the astral contacted. Most notably, both the prime material and limbo were very far away. The rrakkma band would come, they would hunt the illithid here as well, but the Githyanki controlled this place. They possesed almost as great a hatred for illithids as did the Githzerai did, but that hatred was matched by their hatred for the Githzerai, and they had the home plane advantage. The illithid had often wondered how a rrakkma band would fare against Githyanki regulars on the astral. Likely it would die soon, but perhaps that question would be answered first.

Happy Thursday to you too, Ayshela and Troubled Sleep. (It means tomorrow is Friday)

ooc: Don't worry, you're not up against anything quite as formidible as S'rurrus, and I obey AD&D rules loosely at best anyway. I'm pretty much just using the general concept of an illithid here, and not much else. Damon made a mistake that, ironically, those inexperienced in fighting illithids never make. Caught up in preventing it from using its formidible psionic powers against him, he forget just how powerful those tentacles were. As he struck the creature two tentacles moved with the sudden speed of a whip being cracked and wrapped around his sword arm. Another anchored itself in his shoulder. Were he prepared to do so, Damon probably would have been a powerful enough flyer to lift the illithid into the air with him, but his momentum was downward and that was the way the creature pulled him. It stepped out of his path as it pulled. In a single, graceful movement it had seized Damon from his flightpath and tossed him to the ground. Even before he hit, Damon had switched his sword to his other hand and was swinging it towards the tentacles that held him, forcing the illithid to retract them in order to avoid having them severed. Damon rolled and regained his feet as the illithid stepped back, holding all four tentacles out in X shape, ready to strike, revealing the perfectly circular, lipless cavern of its mouth, containing half a dozen rings of teeth. The demon lunged and the illithid directed a stream of mind-scrambling energy against him, but before they could finish testing their powers against one another Heinrich stepped in, striking Damon with his staff and knocking the Incubus away. Then Heinrich disarmed himself, and bowed, "My name is Heinrich, among your kind I may be known as Morhaz Korag, banished and hunted" The illithid ignored his words, instead focussing on the thoughts that were projected outward as a result of speach, taking in meaning without the barrier of language. It was quite a coinicidence to have encountered the infamous Morhaz Korag. He was not a popular figure in the underdark. Rather than invade Heinrich's thoughts to seek out whether or not he was who he claimed to be, the Illithid indicated with it's tentacles towards where Morhaz Korag was known to wear a very recognizable amulet, which Heinrich produced. "By this sign you may know me." He said "Will you honour me with your name, if you have one?" The illithid gave a nod, a humanoid gesture it had recently learned, and projected the thought that served as its name in its own wordless language. It was a curious thought, the image of an oddly shaped four dimensional object at a certain temperature. Though it was easy enough to remember, even if wrapping one's mind around the fourth dimension was a little difficult, and clearly distinctive, the name did not lend to easy translation. Though the mental conversation between Heinrich and Adglomero produced thought projections very similar to those produced by ordinary speach, which the illithid "overheard' it did not ask what sort of information they might be seeking. It didn't want to alarm them with the knowledge that it had listened in. Instead it directed its thoughts towards Silver. It was common belief that telepathic creatures such as illithids communicated by causing a voice to sound in the heads of others, but powerful a thing as it was, the illithid mind was not capable of comprehending audible speach. Silver found herself suddenly aware of this fact. The creature utterly lacked a voice, even a mental one. The next thought it projected to her was the alarm it had felt at suddenly detecting a group of sentient minds moving straight towards it, then its intent to hide itself and observe the creatures and learn their intentions, finally it shared with her the frustration and anxiety it had felt as its attempts to prevent them from becoming aware of its presence failed.

ooc: sure thing, fight or parley as you will. The entire motely crew, including the roc and the dragon, felt a strange and wholly unwelcome presence pressing in on the backs of their minds. From that presence came a sense of regret that they were collectively, so damn magical. They would never have been aware of it had they been limited to only physical or psychic senses, but it could not overcome magic, the presence lamented. Seyan determined its location first, and darted through the air towards it. It wasn't that the party couldn't see what was there... they could definitely see something there, but they couldn't wrap their minds around its form. It wasn't that form was to impossible for mortals to perceive either. Damon or Heinrich, with all their experience with the truly alien beings from hellish dimensions such as the abyss, would have overcome that simple problem. No, whatever was there was dodging through their minds, hiding its image from them. It was adept, but a collection of agile minds tried to catch the image as it danced away from them, and it couldn't avoid all of them. The form of a small child finally resolved. Either elven or human, it was hard to tell. She looked starved, her clothes were torn here and there, tears had left streaks down her dirty face, the very picture of helplessness. It was a false image, something else was trying to present this helpless child to their minds because it realized it could not hide entirely, but its disguise was rapidly uravelling around it. So it dropped all defences and accepted the inevitable. Seyan retreated in alarm. It stood at over six and a half feet tall. Only its head and hands were visible, the rest of its body was concealed by a simple robe. Its flesh a pinkish colour, but it was not soothing flowery sort of pink often considered to be a feminine colour, rather it was unhealthy sort of pink of a fresh scar or infected flesh. Its hands were oddly shaped, and decidedly inhuman, but its head was much worse. Its eyes were great, glistening black ovals positioned on either side. It's skull extended back and upward to an unnatural extent, taking up much more volume than the head of a human or elf or similar creature. This shape enhanced the general squid-like appearance of the creature, for where a mouth should have been, four tentacles, each about three feet long, hung from its face. They twitched about, the movements of each one completely independant of the others. The illithid held up its clawed, three-fingered hands in a universal sign of non-aggression. ooc: So you all recoginized that was an illithid before I said it, right?

Just what the hell was going on? Torn appart by wolves? Inside? That didn't make the slightest bit of sense. Ah werewolves, that made a little more sense. A little. "Now just hold on a minute." Jim raised his voice slightly, approaching Nathaniel. "What qualifies you to make that descision? Hmm?" It was suddenly apparent that Jim was a wider-set sort, quite muscular. He seemed a little angry, and it seemed that maybe that emotion came easily to him. By all appearances, Nathaniel was in a danger besides that posed by marauding werewolves. He didn't seem to acknowledge it, however. "You're just a little too quick to suggest blaming some one else, is all." Jim added. OOC: So I vote we hang Merelas/Nathaniel

We're snakes, yo.