Re: ALL THE THINGS (ATT: A D&D RPG) - Let's get ready to rumble!

[NinjaWeazel]

Xun finishes his morning katas, wiping the frosty condensation from his blade and returning the bastard sword to its sheath with an oddly ritualized folding motion.  "There is coffee, Hogarth.  It is steeping now.  He gestures at a large metal pot sitting on a heated stone before hooking a much smaller kettle from the embers and settling into a seated lotus position and beginning to pour himself a cup of tea.  "Also plenty of stew from last night, for breakfast."

[Ryqoshay]

   Yvonne stares down at the two women below her, one in the cart of ALL THE THINGS, one beside it. Both still slumber, one eternally, one hopefully for not much longer. She steps lightly off the side of the cart and descends upon the one still breathing. Taking a horizontal hovering position, she places herself nary an inch above a human-sized ear. "You are sleepy..." she coos softly. "Ve~ry sleepy... You are in a deep sleep... A peaceful sleep... A wonderfully restful sleep... And while you are in this deep, peaceful, wonderfully restful sleep, you will listen to the sound of my voice... My calm, gentle, friendly voice... You feel relaxed by my voice... It makes you feel safe... Yes, you are in a deep, peaceful, wonderfully restful sleep in which you feel relaxed and safe... And when you awaken from this deep, peaceful, wonderfully restful sleep, you will be well rested, relaxed and feel safe... And you will be compelled to do as my voice will instruct you... My calm, gentle, friendly voice will compel you to allow Yvonne to see your scroll... You will feel calm and relaxed, for the scroll shall be safe in the fire lirai's gentle hands... In fact, you will feel heroic as you will be doing a good deed... Indeed, this act is for the good of all denizens of Sephyr and you will be treated as a hero wherever you go... This act is pleasing to Hiran and he will reward you with his favor... Karla and other powerful deities will smile upon you and good things will come to you... Yes, this is a good thing, and you will feel good doing it... You will feel calm, relaxed, and peaceful when you fulfill this compulsion... You will be happy... And Yvonne will be happy... And Rhyhorn will be happy... And Yvonne will be happy... But most importantly, you will be happy... And relaxed... And peaceful... And calm... This act is a good thing... And in the future you will always allow Yvonne access to any scroll you come across, whenever she asks... Doing all this will make you feel happy, relaxed and feel safe, because it is a good thing..."

[RavenOfRazgriz]

Rhyhorn, still off doing his own thing under the river, continues to eat that delicious limestone.  Much fighting of Goblins leads to much hunger of stomach, after all, especially since he didn't grab any noms before sleep.  Rhyhorn paws a bit at the dirt on the river's bed, careful not to lose his important glowy stone of glowiness, and uncovers even more limestone!  Today's gone be a feast of rock!  And so the Rhino chews on, still oblivious to his situation.

[Ryqoshay]

   "You will crave pancakes every time you pull the trigger of your crossbow... Deep, peaceful, wonderfully restful sleep... You will fear many much moosens as you will believe that one bit your sister... Deep, peaceful, wonderfully restful sleep... You will worship Yvonne as your goddess of fire and a Hiran's second in command of the plane of fire... Deep, peaceful, wonderfully restful sleep... You will think vampires are cute and wish they didn't have such a poor public image, and you will want to improve this image by writing a series of novels about the forbidden love between a vampire and a human... Deep, peaceful, wonderfully restful sleep... You will slowly grow to despise pants and over the next few years will eventually reach the point where you wish to wage war upon them... Deep, peaceful, wonderfully restful sleep... You will caw like a crow whenever a purple-haired man gives you a grapefruit... Deep, peaceful, wonderfully restful sleep... You will kiss a girl and like it, the taste of her cherry chapstick... Deep, peaceful, wonderfully restful sleep... If someone sneezes, you will immediately seek out the nearest table, climb atop and begin dancing like a monkey tasting its very first banana... Deep, peaceful, wonderfully restful sleep... You will salivate every time you hear a hand bell... Deep, peaceful, wonderfully restful sleep..."

[Kalas]

Nathalie whipped her head up, no longer being able to stand the patter-patter of Yvonne's relentless singing and theatrics. She rubbed her forehead roughly and sat in a daze and swayed all around, finishing waking up so that she'll be able to stand the rest of the day. Nathalie ran one hand through her hair, teased it a little, and tossed it aside in a way that she'd always done every morning. Usually, she'd finish her morning routine with a calm, relaxing bath but as since it were not the case here, she rubbed her arms and legs as if to wipe off the "morning dirty" and stretch her body out. At this point ignoring the fiery pixie, she decided she would take the rest of the time to wake up with a short, brisk jog.

"Anyone else to come along on a morning run?" She asked, "It really helps to wake a person up!"

[Ryqoshay]

   Yvonne floats around to face . "All glory to the hypnofey!" she proclaims, staring her strait in the eye.

[EmmaNigma]

Hogarth laughs heartily and pats Xun on the back, maybe too hard. "Friend Xun, you have saved Crispix Day. You will be honored in my clan. Friend N'zla, come, we burn the squishy now."

[Ryqoshay]

   Yvonne holds out her hands, palms up. "Scrolly, please!" she says with a toothy grin. "I wanna try again ta iden'ify the spell on it."

[RavenOfRazgriz]

Rhyhorn, meanwhile, finishes his delicious feast, taking the orb back into his mouth and looking around the river's bed.  The poor underworked hamsters in his head begin to run on their wheels as realization slowly dawns on him - there's nowhere to breathe and nowhere to easily climb out.  Furthermore... something appears to be coming down the river?!  Rhyhorn's mind slowly turns and thinks of what it could be.  That's it!  It must be a shark!  Granted, this idea is entirely fucking retarded, but Rhyhorn.  

Rhyhorn moves to the center of the river bed and digs his feet in, ready to take on his approaching adversary, again ignoring the important yet simple bodily function of breathing.  Today would not be this Rhino's day...

[EmmaNigma]

Hogarth grunts a greeting to Yvonne and Nathalie and grabs Elia's body, dumping it unceremoniously on a pile of wood she found under a dead tree, protected from the snowfall. "N'zla, do that thing you were saying you do. Hogarth need to think as she watches."

[Kalas]

"Well if you insist," She replied, seeing as nobody wanted to go out for a morning jog, and retrieved the scroll from her chest and gave it to the pixie, "Good luck with your identification there.."

[Randomname]

"Friend Hogarth could cut wood for this one, please?  Must be fresh, with tree-blood still within, so sweet smelling saps rise with the soul.  Could do for me?  Arms of priests are weak to hold axe," says the bugman, looking back down to his meal of leaves and grass.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

Rhyhorn, meanwhile, braces himself... but it was not a shark!  Of course not!  But a mere school of small fishies, washing over his stone rhino body.  He sighs, nearly dropping his shiny thing but catching it at the last moment before turning to the side of the river bed.  He backs himself up against the river bed before breaking out into an underwater gallop.  Up, up, up those riverbed walls... and the freedom of the air above the water once more!  Rhyhorn gets himself fully onto dry land and shakes himself off like a wet dog before slowly moseying over to the others, still dripping but now one stomach fuller.

[EmmaNigma]

"I shall come back smeared in the tree blood, piles of tree corpses in my mighty arms." Hogarth takes up her axe, walks a short distance into the woods, and finds a nice, fat tree. "YOU DIE SO OTHERS MAY DIE MORE" Hogarth bellows, and keeps whacking at the tree. From decades of hunting, she knows enough how to cut the tree in a way that it doesn't crush her or her friends.

Having felled the mighty larch, she grunts with frenzy and effort to further chop it into logs. Splurts of sap fling out of every gash in the tree, sticking Hogarth's hands to the axe, the axe itself glistening with tree blood. Finally, the deed is done, and she has an armful of hacked up pieces of larch, which she takes back to camp and dumps next to Elia, leaves and twigs sticking to her skin and hair from the sap.

[Randomname]

N'zla approaches the dead woman and murdered tree.  "Usually not so messy.  But it works.  Can all smell the sap?  Such strongness in this tree, good for the soul." The ek begins arranging the long-dead tree bits into a base bed, placing the freshly killed wood on top of that.  He uses all four arms to lift the priestess gently onto the pile.

Over the following minutes, he arranges wood around her body, forming a sort of casket.  No part of the woman's body is visible any longer.  "Now all needs is the dry wood on bottom to be sparked.  Then prayer.  All friends pray for the health of the soul, may the life of the earth protect it."

N'zla looks to the pixie sorceress.  "Done with scroll?  Perhaps I could read for you, if it is difficult?  While do that, you can make fire for friend."

[RavenOfRazgriz]

Rhyhorn reaches the others in time to see N'zla "closing the casket" on dear Friend Elia.  He stands, lowering his head a bit in respect despite his continued dripping as the services begin.

[Ryqoshay]

   "Yay!" the fire lirai cheers, grabbing the proffered paper and immediately spreading it out on a long, thin clear space in the middle of the cart of ALL THE THINGS. Was that space there before? It does not matter, it is magic time! "Hrm..." she runs her hands over the first part of the scroll. A sneer separates her lips as she studies the second set of scrawlings, and a low growl of frustration emanates from her throat as she attempts to make heads or tails of the third. Today is not looking good for her magical endeavors. "Stupid thing..." she grumbles, rolling it back up and handing it back to its owner. "I gotta think more 'bout 'em... mebe t'morrow..." She turns to head back to camp when, "Krieger's chaotic creations, what is that?" she balks, skittering backwards, away from the goblin-sized mantis she almost ran headlong into.

[Randomname]

"Little flying friend, perhaps this one could try read for you?  Do not like to see new friends upset."  With the attention span of the bug he looks like, N'zla seemingly forgot all about the funeral, for the moment.

[Kalas]

"Just--" She started, "--keep it.." After the pixie hurriedly ran away to elsewhere, Nathalie yet again put the scroll back in the chest and sat down in the back of the cart, unaware of exactly what to do now. She could help burn the body, but she didn't want to look at the dead body again. Sitting in the cart, she started to worry if her fate would be to end up dead like Elia, and while thinking, the apparent alone-ness right now wouldn't quite help.

"Time to burn a body."

[Ryqoshay]

   "Friend?!" Yvonne repeats, aghast at the concept of befriending a giant predatory insect big enough to capture and devour any of her kind. She points at the mantis-like being, "Stay a..." she cuts off as once again, tiny sparks leap several inches out from her finger. "Oh come on!" she cries, grabbing her wrist and glaring accusingly at her hand as she holds it in front of her face. Despite her mystical annoyances, hazy memories of the prior night's events coalesce slowly in her mind. Suddenly, her arms drop to her sides, and for a long, awkward moment of silence, the fire fey stares, mouth agape, at the obviously friendly insectoid before her. Finally, she closes her mouth and smiles. "Yvonne Scintillae Incendam, sorcerer extraordinaire. If memory serves, you said you are N'zla." She reaches out a hand. "Pleased to make your acquaintance. What was that about making fire?"