andaisq, pyth

under mount ebbott

2016-03-22T21:06:27Z

Posted by: andaisq

A mountain stands against the sky. Once, it was called Ebbott; this has been forgotten. It is still tall. This is generally known.

It's dangerous, as well. Supposedly, no one has ever returned from attempting the climb.

No one in their right mind would try to climb such a daunting peak.

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shren (n) bad and shameful creature

2015-12-21T18:19:44Z

Posted by: andaisq

An egg has been laid. It is not a good egg. It is a bad egg. It is shameful; it will bring disaster and regret. So it was given to a mysterious man who said that he would break it, so that good people wouldn't have to get their hands dirty.

The mysterious man has not broken the egg. Instead, he has placed it gently under a bush in a public park. It is warm and safe.

It hatches, and bad and shameful things happen.

The inhabitant of the egg, a bad and shameful creature, gnaws on a stick, unaware of her nature or her crimes. Her wings, bright red and still damp from her hatching, drag behind her over the ground like a bloody flag.

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well that was certainly something

2015-12-04T21:45:36Z

Posted by: sonofsnow

Arikat Kal'amm has had a very stressful morning. His mother revealed that she was going to sacrifice him to Virgloth in exchange for passage to her home dimension, then she was murdered by a roving band of Krann'gol raiders, and they tried to take him as a slave, but he fell into a portal... All in all, it's just been a really rotten day.

Anyway, he just fell into a portal. He's fallen onto some kind of... plant life? Tiny green leaves sticking out of the ground. (The ground is really soft. Kind of disturbing. Leaves also soft. He didn't even break anything.)

"Fucking hells," he says, mostly for form's sake.

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troll ashton kutcher

2015-10-11T02:46:23Z

Posted by: girls_just_wanna

Zanthe likes to consider herself a reasonable person. When she kills people, it's for a reason; Alaine's mom needs fed, she needs some cash, she's bored that day. If someone offers criticism, she gives it all due consideration before stabbing them. She's perfectly happy to cooperate with others, even, as long as they follow all of her commands to the letter and don't question her or have an annoying face or something.

(To be fair, by Alternian standards this puts her somewhere just below Troll Mahatma Gandhi.)

At the moment, however, she is feeling decidedly unreasonable. Leo blew off her perfectly good advice to leave the goddamn sliding puzzle alone and kill himself into immortality, and what's worse, Alaine backed him up. She's used to him agreeing with her ruthless play style, but for some reason he felt like the pointless sidequests would be useful, and "it's not like we're in some kind of hurry, right?"

So, like the reasonable person she is, she stormed out of the computer room and went off to explore the meteor and steal people's stuff from the chests. So far she's found Sky's lacy underthings, a handful of boonbucks, Ari's lacy underthings (which she files away for later perusal), and more weapons than anyone could reasonably need, all of which have gone straight into her inventory.

She opens another door. It leads-

to a refreshmentblock?

She draws a heavily alchemized dagger and advances slowly toward the beveragetable. "If Troll Ashton Kutcher shows up, I'm stabbing him in the face," she warns the empty room.

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hi!

2015-09-03T20:11:18Z

Posted by: bitterchill

Ari is patrolling. Again. It's surprising how frequently someone can be found doing something when he does it every night.

Another quiet night. Jeez. There must be a convention in Sacramento or something.

(Ari makes a mental note to see if there's actually a convention in Sacramento that he could infect with Qik'thx Plague or something. That'd be convenient. Such things have been known to happen.)

Patrol, patrol, patrol.

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rupert

2015-08-10T20:04:22Z

Posted by: andomega

Johanna, back at her apartment after a lengthy afternoon of magical experimentation, considers the facts.

One: The vampires of this town are, by and large, "vegetarian"; a relatively recent development, and the doing of a blonde half-demon powerhouse with an irritating grin.

Two: There is a small vampire, new on the scene, with either highly unusual romantic inclinations or the ability to hypnotize said blonde powerhouse into buying mattresses for him.

Three: Johanna herself is a romantic trainwreck on legs, and Chris is disastrously attractive and magical.

Well, the last point is nothing new, though the last time romance was actually relevant in her life was in 1986. But she can deal. Who gives a shit. Romance is for the birds. She'll learn magic and nothing else will be necessary apart from keeping the Slayer alive.

And on that note, the first two points are important to suss out if she wants to do that. So she needs to find stuff out. Now, who would know about newcomers to the supernatural community...

She phones Rupert.

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bookworms and other pests

2015-06-30T15:54:21Z

Posted by: callmeleo

After leaving the park, Leo gets back into his conveniently tinted-windowed car. (Functional, but not conspicuously nice; this is Chicago.)

"Well," he says wryly, "that was fun."

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frogs? seriously?

2015-06-27T21:34:04Z

Posted by: fortheliving

Frogs.

It is fucking raining fucking frogs.

Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden did not go to Wizard College* so some asshole could make it start raining frogs in his town. He takes a team to check it out. (His team consists of Mouse, who is now large enough not to need to sit in his pocket, and Buttercup. They are a good team.)

(*Ebenezar McCoy's second-largest barn)

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onwards to adventure!

2015-06-27T21:22:41Z

Posted by: sonofsnow

Soon enough, Arlen has packed everything Nior deems necessary, and Harin has secured his adventure kit/combat bindle. They are ready for adventure.

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a mishap perhaps

2015-06-22T23:37:31Z

Posted by: sonofsnow

Arlen Kallem has recently come into possession of a boat. Well, actually he's recently come into possession of a few things, given his mother just died. But most relevantly, he has a boat. And a friend, with whom he can boat. These facts are relevant.

Harin has no objections to boating; he's still in shock, as far as Arlen can tell, which is pretty unreasonable, considering it's been like a week since his dad died, and the guy was a complete asshole. But it does make him conveniently portable and boat-able. Arlen is the skipper and Harin is the something. They are the perfect team.

Even the most perfect team can make dumb mistakes, though. Like drifting farther out to sea than intended. Or not noticing a hurricane brewing. Or being swept across the ocean until they smash onto the far shore. That sort of thing.

Ari, sprawled on the beach, has a pillow; the pillow is a large chunk of rock protruding from the sand. It's such a lovely pillow. Very comfortable. He's going to sleep now. Harin has similar opinions on the subject.

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unaccountable

2015-05-25T17:07:51Z

Posted by: sonofsnow

Ari's ninth birthday was last week, and the last of his baby teeth finally came out. (Mama said she'd have to yank it out herself if it didn't get with the program. He wriggled in exaggerated fear.) And she let him come pixie-hunting with her! They didn't catch many, but it was a lot of fun. He hopes she lets him do it again soon.

They're walking through the brush of Shallow Winter, and Mama's telling him about ley lines. He listens intently.

So intently that he doesn't notice the quiet growling coming out of the ground.

It abruptly falls away, and he's swallowed into the earth.

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oh my

2015-03-02T05:02:48Z

Posted by: andaisq

Morty knows he shouldn't be screwing around with multidimensional shit. It's dangerous, it's impractical, it's blah blah blah. But it's a potential key to unlimited energy, how does nobody see that? He's built a dimensional siphon (it kind of looks like a cardboard box with a funnel and a TI-84 taped to it, but it damn well works), keyed in the dimensional coordinates to a random plane, and by God he's going to use it.

He flips the switch and waits for the energy bar to fill up.

It does! It fills up very rapidly. Then it explodes, along with the box. There's rather more smoke than there should be, and once the smoke clears someone is standing there.

"Oh my," Morty says faintly.

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uh what

2015-02-18T23:23:49Z

Posted by: andaisq

Perrit Hookhand, itinerant rat mystic and occasional graverobber extraordinaire, is currently hunting the wild berry. Berries are delicious, and the cheese he got from Sally is running out, and he doesn't want to have to ask for more so soon. She's nice enough already, he doesn't need to elevate her to sainthood. So: berries. He has a tidy little basket of blackberries and raspberries and strawberries hidden under his coat in case some goodmouse is struck by the perfectly understandable impression that he stole it from a dying widow or something and feels the need to bring him to justice with a broadsword.

...Is that a door in that tree over there? That is definitely a door. Perrit does not remember a door in that tree. He cautiously squeaks it open, and- the interior is definitely not the interior of a tree.

"My dreams usually have more food than this," he comments as he walks into the strange room. No one else appears to be inside.

It's fucking cold out. He's going to take advantage of the inexplicable central heating in this tree and shelter here for a minute.

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fucking finally

2015-02-10T02:52:33Z

Posted by: andomega

Jahenna is polishing her armor by the entrance to camp. Fuck armor. Fuck armor, so much, forever, fucking armor, bullshit.

She's deputized Zann to make the Reverend Mother as uncomfortable as humanly possible, a task to which she has taken like, well, like an elven maleficar to fucking with the Chantry. This leaves Jahenna with free time to spend on reading, battle drills, and- oh for fuck's sake.

"My liege," nods Jahenna. "To what do I owe the honor?"

"Just checking in. How goes it?"

"Just polishing my armor, sire."

"Excellent!" Cailan sits on a tree stump and starts- talking at her.

"Maker's breath, look who it is, my goodness, it's Duncan and some new recruit, I simply must go meet them so sorry to cut you off." Jahenna takes off at top speed, leaving Cailan in a cloud of thinning dust.

"Duncan. Maker, Andraste and all her fucking cousins be praised. His Majesty is trying to talk to me. He- Andraste's lacy underwear, he followed me. If you need me I'll be hiding in a river." She takes off again.

"Good day, Duncan!" hails Cailan. "I see you've a new recruit to your number! How goes it, friend?"

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the boss ain't gonna be happy

2015-02-08T00:55:51Z

Posted by: andaisq

The Alienage in Denerim is not what you'd call a nice place to live, but it's calm, and it has some nice scenery. Enormous tree, shanty-huts, that sort of thing. And the people are always interesting.

One of those interesting people is standing shadily on a street corner and looking at nearby elves. One of his hands is in his pocket. He's unusually dark for someone in Ferelden. Unusually human, too, though he's hunched over so that it's not immediately obvious. And he's muttering to himself, which is a sure way to make people not want to look at someone.

The things he's muttering to himself aren't the ravings of a madman, though. "Not her, I'm sure she'd just rupture... couldn't get him... promising. Excuse me, young man?" he quavers in the voice of an old beggar. "Spare a silver?"

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boy are my arms tired

2015-02-06T22:14:05Z

Posted by: andomega

Jahenna feels that it's just fucking typical that the Blight would start just as she was getting to the good part of her book.

Obviously, as a Grey Warden, she's expected to blah blah recruit some young morons to get killed by either the Darkspawn or the Joining or the fact that they're Wardens and Wardens are marked for death. Whoopee. Duncan owes her big for this. She's back in the fucking Circle tower, she swore she'd never come here again even if they tried to drag her back with wild horses.

Greagoir is there. Fucking typical. And he's got his husband with him. "Hello, Greagoir," she grits out as she dismounts. "Hello, Irving."

"Hello, Jahenna," smiles Greagoir genially. "I assume you're not here to rejoin our ranks?"

She spits on the ground. "Very funny, you worthless creep. I'm here to recruit mages for the Wardens. There's a Blight on, in case you hadn't heard for some reason. Speaking of which, how's the weather up your own ass?"

Okay, there are aspects of being a Warden that she likes. Such as having carte blanche to tell people to go fuck themselves.

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mistakes were made

2015-02-06T21:29:49Z

Posted by: girls_just_wanna

The night of the eighth of Kingsway in Zann's eighteenth year, she sneaks out of her room and knocks on the door of Metella's quarters. And knocks again. And keeps knocking until the door is opened.

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hey youse

2015-02-06T04:07:56Z

Posted by: andaisq

Sazann Ricida is upset. Actually, she's pissed.

This is not new. Zann is usually pissed about something or other, but she's particularly pissed at the moment. A baby just got Harrowed. That isn't right. If somebody should get Harrowed early, it should be her, everybody knows she's the best at fire and that's the only thing that really matters anyway and she's already thirteen that's almost old enough and this little baby is eleven. Fucking mages. Fucking mages, fucking templars, fucking human bastards.

She bets the girl is human too. Fucking humans. Elves deserve to be discriminating against them, elves are better. See how those apes like living in alienages. Things'll be different when she's Queen.

She goes to confront the dumb asshole baby. She perches on the foot of her bed and waits for her to return from her post-Harrowing party. Show her what's what.

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the game's afoot!

2015-01-30T17:52:21Z

Posted by: fortheliving

Harry is really, really glad he didn't go into some depressive fit thing after Susan... you know.

He considered it. It was very tempting. But in the end... what good would it have done? Susan wouldn't want him to do it. Hell, if she'd popped out of the woodwork and he hadn't left the house in four months she'd probably have slapped him. So he forced himself to get his boots on every day and do his damn job. He found lost things. He worked on improving a few of his foci and enchanted objects and stuff. Cries most nights, but doesn't admit it, and that's been getting better. Recently he took a job protecting some kind of monastery from monkey demons.

A factor relevant to that particular job is currently napping in his coat pocket. He found the puppy there afterwards and tried to call that monk dude, but the monastery seemed to have vanished. Which was weird. But he got the puppy vetted by Bob and Father Forthill, and they said the little guy wasn't some kind of hellspawn, so... he kept him. Called him Mouse. Let him nap in his coat pocket. Mister got along with him, because Mouse wasn't big enough to be a threat to the big cat's authority.

Anyway, Mouse is napping in his coat pocket, and Harry just got out of the morgue looking at a corpse. He's pretty sure this is the work of some White Court bastard. The victim doesn't have a mark on him, but he's got the dopiest grin in human history. And Harry, being Harry, knows from dopey grins. So Harry sets out looking for a White Court vampire. Thomas doesn't know of any of his cousins who'd have gone after this guy (their official victims are dumped in a nearby quarry, apparently), so he's out investigating the red light district. And trying to look like someone who would be interested in a prostitute, instead of someone who would rather cut off his testicles with a spoon than lay a finger on a member of the oldest profession.

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lurk lurk lurk

2015-01-28T22:17:37Z

Posted by: callmeleo

Leonardo Sangreroja de las Umbras is not new to being a vampire of the Red Court. He's not a noble or anything, but he's been around for a very long time. He's reached the ripe old age of 600, outliving his noble father and the vast majority of his bloodthirsty sisters, almost entirely by being a filthy coward. He has no pretensions to the blood of milk-pale virgins; he's perfectly fine getting his dinner for the week under a bridge. He occasionally keeps slaves, but only rarely. Most of the time, he occupies himself with reading, and painting, and delicious, delicious blood. On occasion he indulges in a good alleyway lurking.

This is one of those occasions. Chicago's alleyways are not particularly well maintained, but they're better than the slums of Toledo in 1632. Leo likes them. They're meditative, and often contain convenient homeless populations.

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goddamn straight people

2015-01-24T23:46:10Z

Posted by: andomega

Johanna has elected to spend the night after that little mattress-shopping episode getting very drunk and seeing if there's any available ladies in this town. There seems to be exactly one bar not frequented by demons (she's not prejudiced, but she'd rather not land a mantis-woman for a one-night stand), so she stops in for a pint.

Her search is unsuccessful; there's a couple of gay teen witch-girls, but she's not keen on sleeping with someone who could be her grandniece, and anyway they seem less than interested in her slightly dusty charms. She gets miserably drunk, sobers up miserably with a whispered invocation, and makes her miserable way home.

...She spots someone lurking, out the corner of her eye. She knows from lurking, it was a whole unit in Watcher training. That is a vampiric lurk. Recalling last night's incident, she decides to investigate. From her purse, she retrieves an unobtrusive spraycan of sanctified Mace, and she strolls very casually into the occupied alleyway.

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oh hi mark

2015-01-20T21:53:05Z

Posted by: bitterchill

Ari has completed the enchantment of a very nice sword for his client. After some cooing over him being cute about a boy and some distress about him being cute about a vampire, Sally taught him the window enchantment (it's actually quite simple, you just jargon jargon wizardry words that don't make sense) and sent him on his merry way. The sun has finally set, and he's strolling past the Magic Box deliberating over whether to go in and see if they'd like some shiny rocks.

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the fucking slayer

2015-01-19T02:29:07Z

Posted by: andomega

Really, Johanna should've known that the moment she finished cataloguing that cursed Assyrian pottery they'd do something to fuck her up. She just wasn't quite expecting to be saddled with a goddamned Slayer.

"I don't quite know what to say, Quentin," she averred, instead of reaching across Travers' fake Queen Anne mahogany desk and wringing his neck like the turkey he was. "Surely there's someone better qualified," and less occupied with important work that doesn't involve babysitting some hormonal brat who can bench-press a car.

"No, Johanna, I'm afraid there isn't. I know, I was shocked as well," he tittered as though he had the goddamned right to pal around with her after throwing this albatross around her neck. Or ever, really. He was like the human equivalent of a lukewarm glass of skim milk with a shot of sawdust. "But really, you're one of our best Watchers, and I'm sure any Slayer would be better off with your tutelage."

Johanna smiled politely until she thought she could open her mouth without spitting stomach acid in his damn eyes, and said, "But what about my work in Room 42?"

"Oh, not to worry," Travers assured her. "That'll all be handled."

"By whom."

"...It'll be handled."

"By whom, Quentin."

"...Landen Serrano."

Before Johanna could scream aloud, Travers pulled out the final stop.

"Unless, of course, you're refusing the position."

Of course she wasn't. She couldn't. Refusing to take on the Slayer would be like... like refusing to become a fucking duchess. But come hell or high water, she would defend her right to go back to her apartment and bitch about it to her cat.

And then she was on a plane to America. God, it was sickening. And it was California, worse yet. She wanted to soak Quentin Travers' miserable little head in brine.

Now, she's settled into her apartment, settled into her job as school librarian on top of the goddamned Hellmouth, and settled into intimidating the living hell out of children as they attempt to check out books. At least she can have some fun.

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index post

2015-01-19T02:19:36Z

Posted by: pythbox

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