About a five minute walk down a fern-lined path lies the ancient training grounds, fixed up by Cybele for the occasion. This obstacle course was once used by ancient hunters to improve their skills, reflexes, and ability to easily move through treacherous, overgrown places. As the other events go on according to schedule, Princess Cybele encourages everyone interested to come take a look at the training grounds at their own pace, and to test their own skills in a time trial run of the course.
The babble of a creek fills the air as people approach. Siegfried of Neptune, a blue-haired Knight, is the one waiting at the end of the path to greet people with a smile. He is also the one holding the stopwatch.
He directs people to the starting line, marked by two stakes hammered into the dirt.
Then it’s Ready?
Set?
Go.
Quote:
Welcome to the Training Grounds! This is a go at your own pace dice game where you follow the prompts to see how quickly you can get through the obstacle course. Sign ups are not required for this event so feel free to pop in at any time.
To play, roll a dice and then fill out a post for the prompt! Make sure you keep track of your total. The highest total with filled out posts wins! Feel free to have your character go through the course with other characters, or solo!
Please keep a total of your score in your post!
This event is open until February 29th. It counts as a regular requirement.
Thanks for coming out and have fun!
The sound of water grows louder as you come up to the first obstacle. The path comes to the edge of a large creek, or perhaps a small river depending on your perspective. It’s obvious that this was built into a part of the creek that’s supposed to be difficult to cross. The current is fast, and the water is deeper than you might think, about waist high.
There are, however, strategically placed stepping stones that you can leap across, if you do it just right.
Quote:
Roll a 6 sided dice.
1-2: You slip off a rock into the water and aren’t expecting how strong it is. You end up a good 20 feet downstream and have to fight the current to get back to where you were.
3-4: You slip off a rock, but towards the edge of the water where you’re able to dig your heels into the creek bed and not get carried off. You’re still wet, but at least you didn’t lose too much time.
5-6: You bound across the river stones like a graceful antelope. Perfect!
As you come to the other side of the river, you see the next obstacle, this one more familiar from those ninja warrior shows. It is a wall. The base of the wall is ancient, made of rough-hewn stones and mortar, but Cybele has attached some planks of wood to the top of it to make it a bit taller and more of a challenge for those with magical powers.
At least, that was the idea.
Quote:
Roll a 6 sided dice.
1-2: You jump, and… don’t quite reach the top. Maybe you stumbled, or misjudged the distance. You try again and again, and eventually you get there, but it’s harder than it looks.
3-4: You jump, and grab the top of the wall just by your fingertips. You pull yourself slowly up. You did it!
5-6: You jump over the wall in a single bound. Clearly Cybele being scared of heights meant she didn’t make this nearly tall enough.
After climbing the wall, you find yourself on another ancient stone platform rather than on the forest floor. The next obstacle is a tightrope element set up about five feet off of the ground. The ropes are tied between several trees in a zigzag pattern, but to help you along, there are also some ropes hanging down from higher branches.
It’s not quite made to be easy though. As you get closer to the end, the ropes get farther and farther apart.
Quote:
Roll a 6 sided dice.
1-2: You misjudge the distance of one of the ropes, and topple to the ground. It’s not far, but you still have to climb back up to the top and give it another go.
2-3: It’s trickier than it looks. You wobble, and almost fall once or twice, but you keep your balance in the end and make it across.
5-6: You’re a natural at this, or maybe you’ve just been through a lot of ropes courses. You whiz through everything in a matter of seconds.
Maybe it’s not a surprise, but at the end of the ropes element you find yourself facing a zipline. Cybele did manage to bring up a proper zip trolley, but otherwise it’s fairly primitive. There’s nothing strapping you in, although it’s not too far off of the ground, either.
The rope is tied off around a nearby tree. You just have to grab it, jump, and go.
Quote:
Roll a 6 sided dice
1-2: It takes an embarrassingly long time to get the rope off from around the tree. It’s just giving you a hard time for some reason. Once you’re zipping, you’re fine, but you lost some time there.
3-4: Maybe you’re scared of heights, or maybe you just forget to take a running start.
You start a bit slow, but you pick up some speed by the time you get to the end. 5-6: You untie the rope like a cowboy and jump into the air like a bird. You zip through the air with maximum efficiency.
After that, you’ve made it! You sprint the last few feet through the stakes that mark the finish line, and with a click of the stopwatch, your time is in the books.
Puck figured this training obstacle course would be a nice warm-up for the real tests to come, namely the Hunt and especially the arm-wrestling tournament. He'd checked the brackets when he arrived on Cybele's homeworld, and it turned out he didn't go until after the qualifiers were selected, so he had a bit of time to limber up.
The first obstacle was a fairly large creek, with a series of stepping stones used to cross it. Stepping carefuly but quickly, as this was a timed event, he easily made it across, barely even getting wet from the splash of the rushing water.
"Piece o' cake, mate!" he grinned at the timekeeper, trotting off to the next obstacle.
TOTAL: 5
Meighei rolled 6-sided dice:
Total: 0 (-0)
Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2024 10:44 am
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Meighei
Bishoujo-senshi Mahou-shoujo
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Meighei rolled 1 6-sided dice:
4Total: 4 (1-6)
Meighei
Bishoujo-senshi Mahou-shoujo
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Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2024 10:45 am
Erytheia was ready for the Training Grounds.
He knew he would have to be skilled to make it through, much less at a good pace. He knew he’d be faced with obstacles. He just didn’t know which ones they would be.
Hesitant, the knight began the course.
The first was a creek, with water running its way through a series of rocks. If he could jump from rock to rock, he’d make it across. He bounded from one to the other, but nearly missed the last rock.
Luckily, only the long flowing bits of his uniform got wet. Better that than fall in.
The second obstacle was a wall, apparently. Didn't seem to be a very tall one, for all there were boards set up to make it higher than the relatively low stone section of it. Didn't seem any taller than a two-story building, which for an Eternal Senshi like Puck was nothing.
Running forward, he cleared the fence like the winner of the Grand National and ran towards the next obstacle.
"Oh bloody hell," Puck grumbled once he reached the top of the wall and saw what the third obstacle was. "Not a tightrope." He'd had plenty of trouble with the balance-beam thing at Urania's homeworld, he wasn't sure he'd make this one. But there were ropes this time to hold onto, and it wasn't spanning a chasm.
Holding onto the ropes, he easily walked the tightrope to the other end, where he breathed a sigh of relief. Onto the final obstacle!
And the last obstacle was what looked like a zipline! Puck had a moment trying to figure out how it worked, but ultimately he did. Getting off to a slow start, he picked up speed toward the end and made it to the ground without embarrassing himself.
Charging full tilt toward the finish line, he crossed it and did a victory dance as the stopwatch clicked off. That had to be a good score, right?
The hunt for the jackalope was ongoing but Illyria had managed to find herself in a new area that was being overseen by a seemingly familiar face. This knight, she had seen him before. There was dead certainty in that opinion and she took in the obstacle course that lay beyond him before giving herself a mental pep talk. It couldn't hurt to take a few minutes out from chasing after that special animal, could it? Nodding her head at Siegfried the Mauvian entered the course before coming across the first obstacle that had been set up to test the mettle of those that attempted the course.
Carefully Illyria inspected the water that flowed past the stones. It looked rather cold and rather deep. However that wasn't going to stop her from doing what had to be done. She gathered her momentum to make the first jump to the first stone with relative ease. Her mind flashed to a scene from a movie where another cat was in a similar situation of having to use stones to cross a river, but unlike the feline Sassy, Illyria had no plans of falling into the water. Making the next leap Illyria found herself safely finding purchase on the stone that was positioned further away before feeling like this was going to be a cakewalk. There were only a handful of stones left to cross when Illyria felt her paws slip on the surface of her next target. Into the water she went.
Flashbacks of falling into that icy water on that mysterious gameboard overtook the small feline and she struggled against the current for a few minutes before managing to at least pull herself out of the water. At least there was no waterfall waiting around no corner. Dutifully, Illyria tried to groom a little of the excess moisture from her fur before marching back to the beginning in order to try again. The time wasted would be costly, but Illyria was no quitter. Gamely she placed her paws on the first stone once more before crossing successfully the second time around.
"Guess Sassy and I have more in common than I wanted to admit," Illyria grumbled as she raced on towards the next obstacle.
After pausing once more to groom a little more moisture from her fur Illyria came up on the next obstacle before simply plopping down on her haunches before casting a disdainful glare at the roughly hewn rock wall that now blocked her access from moving forward. The idea that a wall, with adequate footholds would be something to deter her was simply preposterous. For a moment the cat merely studied the wall before noting the texture of a certain area before she shifted a little. It would be tricky, and more than likely if she didn't land right, that she could lose a few claws, but that thought alone did not deter Illyria from launching herself towards the top of the wall.
It almost ended in disaster.
Illyria's claws caught purchase on the rough surface of the wall and she gamely dug in her back claws into the roughly hewn material. Her paws found little crevices in which she dug her powerful back legs into before straining to reach the top of the wall with her front paws. It was almost a lost cause but as she pulled herself up with another enormous heaving motion did Illyria find herself sitting primly on the top of the wall, staring out at the view beyond. Her gaze sharpened on what seemed to remain beyond for this obstacle course before she hopped down nimbly on what seemed to be another platform.
So it seemed like the next obstacle in the way that she had to overcome was a rope crossing. Illyria studied the criss-crossing pattern before wondering if using her human form would be more helpful on this obstacle than the form she currently was in. But if she changed forms, would that be breaking the rules? Figuring that the best (safer) option was to stay as she was Illyria began to nimbly pick her way across the first few feet of rope before grimacing. This was going to be harder than it looked. The ropes that were spaced apart in the trees would be of no use to her in her current state and she sighed.
"Guess it's the hard way for me today."
With claws digging into the fibrous material that she had to work her way across, Illyria gamely clung to the ropes for dear life before hastily pulling herself forward, one inch at a time. Her teeth came into play at one point as she chomped down on the rope for extra purchase as her back legs kicked out at open air. She just had to make it across, that was it. It was the new mantra, along with 'don't fall' that was going through her mind as she finally made it across the structure.
"Perhaps this course was not designed with cats in mind," she muttered before taking in the sight of the last obstacle that she having to face. "Oh... no..."
What sort of contraption was this? Illyria's gaze took in the line of rope that was strung from the platform she now stood on to the ground below with a look of extreme puzzlement. Never before had she seen anything like this. How did it work? How did one operate it? Could she just opt to travel down the line like she had just travelled over the previous obstacle?
Were hands a necessity to operate this device? Illyria looked down at her paws before her ears twitched at the sound of something repetitively striking another surface before her gaze lit upon the source. There was yet another rope that once untied, could be used to drag the strange device closer to the platform in order for her to use. Figuring that she would only use her human form to safely descend the rope line did Illyria race to where the rope was tied up before staring at the mass of knots that she had to undo. Well, she wasn't going to get anything done if she didn't get started on undoing the knots that held the rope in place. At first, it was slow going. At a second pause Illyria spat out the piece of rope she'd been trying to manipulate with her teeth before taking on her human form.
"If this disqualifies me, so be it. I think this course discriminates against small cats." Nimble human digits began to figure out the knots in the rope and soon Illyria was ready to pull the device towards her before giving the smallest of nervous twitches as it rolled smoothly towards her. Did she ... have to ... hold onto this thing ... to get down and finish the course? Oh ... dear.
Almost wrapping her arms through the space the handle afforded one to hold onto did Illyria close her eyes and give a nervous chuckle, "here goes nothing," escaped from her as she leaped off the platform, allowing the momentum of her jump to power her through the air and down the line to the end of the course.
Once she disengaged from the machine Illyria resumed her cat form before heading back to the area where the jackalope hunt was occurring. This little detour was not a place for cats.
Roll One = 1 Roll Two = 4 Roll Three = 3 Roll Four = 2
Nairobi looked around the training grounds. The other participants at the training grounds looked determined and focused determined and focused, their eyes fixed on the task at hand. Nairobi let out a deep breath, trying to calm the flurry of nerves that had settled in her stomach.
The first obstacle that she had to tackle was a large creek. The current of the creek was fast and seemed dangerous. She and the others were to find their way across the creek. There were stepping stones that could be leapt and crossed.
She made her way to the first stepping stone taking her time.
Carefully balancing on one foot, Nairobi extended her other leg, testing the stability of the stone before fully committing her weight. It wobbled slightly, causing her heart to skip a beat, but she regained her balance and took a deep breath.
The rushing water below filled her ears, urging her forward. She focused on the task at hand, blocking out the noise of her racing heartbeat. With each step, her confidence grew as she leaped from one stone to the next, feeling a surge of adrenaline coursing through her veins.
When she made it across, she couldn't believe it. She took a minute to place a hand on her beating chest and took a deep breath. It was time for the next obstacle.
The next obstacle was a wall. It was a tall wall that you had to jump over to get to the next obstacle.
She approached the wall and assessed its height, It didn't really look all that tall up close.
She took a few steps back to gain momentum and with a burst of energy, she sprinted towards the wall, her heart pounding with anticipation.
She propelled herself upward with all her might.
For a moment, time seemed to freeze as Nairobi soared through the air. She felt a newfound freedom in that fleeting moment of weightlessness. Then gravity pulled her back down, and with an agile grace, Nairobi landed on the other side of the wall.
