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 Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2015 9:44 am
══ SOLO ═══════════════════════════════════════
_________BANDITS FOR THE GREATER GOOD
_________Location: Tale
And just like that, Ouen was a bandit.
He hadn’t always counted on being a bandit, but truth be told, the title seemed to fit. He had never liked structure or strict rules, and there wasn’t very much of that. Talin called the shots, and some of his close cronies bossed the rest of the band around from time-to-time – but it was easy enough to avoid their ire if you kept your head on straight. They travelled between hideouts in Tale and Jauhar, branching out to hit this or that caravan, and they lived off what they stole or scavenged. It was a good life, all things considering!
But although Ouen was happy being a bandit, he avoided thinking of himself as any petty old ‘thief’. They weren’t thieves, no, not at all – why, Talin’s band were bandits for the Greater Good! They stole from the rich, the conniving and the injust, and they gave to the poor. Why, you could almost say they were returning stolen property. Rich Oban merchants were making money off the native lands of others, squeezing them dry and wheeling home with laden carts and s**t-eating grins. Ouen was simply evening out the playing field.
It was, of course, hard to avoid the fact that some of the other bandits did not see it this way; many of them would take the best pickings for themselves, even if they had no need for such things, before delivering the leftovers to the needy. But, for the time-being, he decided to let this slide.
He was doing the right thing, he was convinced. The others, well… they weren’t his problem. This was Talin’s band. Ouen was the new guy, and he had no sway here.
* * *
He was staying in the Tale camp when a group of them were gathered – 7 bandits, lead by Talin himself. A lightly-guarded caravan was heading their way, and after trekking out to a good ambush spot they hid themselves and waited.
For Ouen, this was the difficult part. Although he had spent much of his time as a child hiding in the jungle canopy and watching what went on underneath, there had at least been something interesting to watch. But an ambush was not the same thing – an ambush was just waiting, waiting and looking at nothing because there was nothing to look at yet. Having never been a hunter, this was odd to him. His muscles burned with restless energy, and his mind wandered.
He thought about Oba, and the distant lands from which this caravan travelled. He thought about the alkidikes on the ship, and the distant, forgotten land where they were supposed to be going.
Was it really there? Would they just sail forever, and fall off the edge of the world?
* * *
The look-out signalled, and everyone tensed. Moments later the caravan swung into view – two heavy wagons pulled by four quhar each, and an accompanied retinue of what looked like four armed guards.
Four against seven. Those were alright odds.
When the caravan was close enough, Talin called out and the bandits launched to their feet, crossing ground hard and fast. Two stopped the lead wagon, four picked a guard each, and Talin stayed close to keep an eye on the merchants themselves – who sometimes tried to slip out of sight in the chaos.
Ouen was with the fighters. He picked a stout one with a hammer, relying on his speed and the extended range of his lance to avoid the Oban’s deadly weapon. He had an advantage, but it was not an easy fight; this man was old and clever, full of sneaky tricks and techniques to parry his blows. Maybe it was Ouen’s inexperience that won him the match – never having been taught any proper fighting skills he brawled on unpredictable instinct, and the old man soon tired enough to trip over the blunt end of the lance and spill onto the ground.
Ouen kicked away the hammer and kept the blade of his lance resting lightly on the Oban’s back, watching as his fellow bandits restrained their opponents in similar ways.
From where he stood now (by the flank of a big black quhar, who looked quite unimpressed by all the excitement), he could not quite see what was going on within the wagon. Talin had gone around the back, no doubt to inspect the contents and unload… but there was some shouting there, masked over by the incessant shouting and swearing of one of the Oban guards. It was taking longer than usual. Was something wrong? He wanted to see, but the old soldier beneath him was looking up with a scheming eye.
“Stay down.” Ouen threatened, pushing down a little harder on the lance. “Don’t ‘cha get no ideas.”
The Oban spit into the sand. “You don’t scare me, boy. I know your kind. You wouldn’t dare do any serious ha – “
Before he finished his words, there was a sharp, panicked scream – that cut out as quickly as it started. There was some gargled, strangled yells then, and the thump of a body crumbling to the floor.
This much Ouen could see, from underneath the wagon’s wheels – an Oban woman, decked out in finery, lay lifeless on the ground beside feet he knew belonged to Talin. Blood streamed down from her chest. The two that had been holding on to the animals quickly moved to the back, and soon there was the sound of loot being thrown down off the back of each wagon.
The dead Oban woman was hauled back into her wagon.
* * *
Ouen had tried to erase the sight of her from his memory. It made him sick. It wasn’t the blood, of course, or the violence – he was used to that. And it wasn’t the death, either. He had killed too, when a guard or a soldier had gotten out of hand and refused to stand down. He had killed Obans, and he had even killed Alkidikes.
But this woman… she had not been a warrior. She was just an old woman, an old woman guarding her things. Talin didn’t have to kill her. He could have knocked her out, tied her up, or just plain bullied her into submission.
Or was he going soft? What debt did he owe anyway, to rich old Oban women and their underhanded, gouging trade? None. None whatsoever.
And yet there was a difference, wasn’t there, between taking someone’s money and taking someone’s life.
_________[words | 1090]
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Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2015 12:39 pm
══ PRP ═══════════════════════════════════════ _________AS DIRTY A MOVE_________Ouen & Kalliope
_________Location: Jauhar (Oban border)
_________Link
Together with a large group of Talin's bandits, Ouen raided the caravan of a wealthy (and infamously repugnant) Oban merchant. While unloading the caravan of its riches, the bandits came across a (very pretty) Oban girl. But she wasn't a merchant -- she was merchandise. She was chained to her seat, and had to be pulled free with Ouen's (not very delicate) help. Having no interest in being involved in slave trafficking, Ouen wanted to let her go... but the other bandits insisted that she was valuable. It was Kalliope, the girl herself, who finally suggested that she would follow the bandits and work for them. She seemed to be hoping that Ouen would take her under his care... something he did agree to, seeing the severity of her situation and not wanting anything worse to happen to her.
_________[ complete ]
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Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2015 6:14 am
══ SOLO ═══════════════════════════════════════
_________CALLING THE SHOTS
_________Location: Jauhar
When he was young, Ouen had always taken his leadership for granted. It just seemed natural – he was the one with the ideas and the guts to go through with them, while most other kids were easily discouraged by their inexperience. Anyway, he hadn’t even thought of himself as a ‘great leader’ or anything like that. He just showed up, he took charge, and after a while he drifted back into the jungle, to find some new prank and set of playmates which whom to pass the time.
He had been prepared, all in all, for life as an adult to be different. He hadn’t been looking forward to it, per se (because he did very much like calling the shots), but he had expected that as he started interacting with other adults, all these older people who had skills and experience and ideas of their own, that, well… he wouldn’t be able to be so much of a leader, because people wouldn’t necessarily listen to him just because he flattered or teased them into doing so. Surely adults preferred to make their own choices, rather than blindly taking the others of others?
But maybe, it turned out, that he had been overestimating the free will of most of the world’s adults.
He had noticed it first during the battle against the Alkidikes. It had been a good fight, and a fierce one. But he had struggled to understand the extremists. What did they want? They seemed to just… rally by their leaders, and echo their cries. This was all very well, of course (that being how armies worked) – but when the cries of their leaders started making absolutely no sense to him, calling upon some mystical guidance he simply couldn’t relate to, something in him seemed to shift. He realised two things. One; people were drawn to leaders, and two; leaders had the power to twist people all backwards.
Then, startlingly, he began to see the effects of this up close and personal.
* * *
When he had joined Talin’s band, the Wind man had had it all under his control. He had his trusted entourage, and they could throw around some influence, but that itself came from Talin. They spoke Talin’s words and they gave Talin’s orders when they set out to raid, and everyone listened because crossing them was just the same as crossing Talin – and that, they had seen, could have fatal consequences.
Ouen had assumed, at first, that to gain more influence, he would have to get closer to Talin.
Well, he did gain more influence. But he never got closer to Talin – if anything, they grew further apart (which was no easy feat, given that they barely knew each other at all). The two simply didn’t see eye to eye. It was strange, almost. On first glance they weren’t too different; both of them were ambitious, even ruthless. Both could be vindictive and rash, and both could be rather sharp-tongued when slighted.
But Ouen had his ideologies, his philosophies, his long, rambling, curse-ridden tirades about Freedom and Equality and the Rights of All People to Fight Back Against their Oppressors, no matter the means, to Defend their Way of Life and their Pursuit of Happiness.
And Talin? Talin had a sharp eye for good pickings, a knack for staying hidden, and a very sharp knife.
Ouen, in theory, had nothing against those skills. So he said nothing about the matter, and when Talin sent him off with part of the band to run a raid (usually under the command of one of his close friends), he followed his orders. But it was on these raids, away from Talin’s influence, that Ouen started to notice some of his own. Despite the presence of Talin’s underlings, some of the band members seemed to turn to him for guidance. At first it was just on account of him being a jungle expert, and hence well-suited to discussing raiding strategies in Jauhar. But then he would be called upon in Tale, and on the Oban border. Then he did not have to be called upon at all – he simply said his piece and others listened.
He had influence, suddenly, in matters that were previously far beyond his control. Under Talin’s command, their raids were vicious and bloody. But with Ouen charging ahead, things were… different. The band was no less vicious as just as effective in inspiring panic -- but guards were subdued and tied down, never killed. Merchants were tossed from their wagons, but left to run and hide wherever they pleased. And some amount of the looted goods they took ended up in the hands of nearby residents without ever making it back to camp.
Talin got to hearing about it, of course. And Ouen knew he wasn’t pleased. But Ouen had learned some tricks from the man himself, and he knew how to defer attention from his actions. He convinced the others that killing was wasteful – that even the locals didn’t see fit to slay soldiers who were merely doing their job, even if they were protecting the caravans of wealthy Oban traders. And killing merchants, well, what would that achieve? There would only be fewer merchants, and weren’t they sort of dependent on a constant supply of the same?
* * *
“If we start killin’ them left an’ right,” Ouen drawled, resting by a fire with a small group of those who generally took his side on these matters, “They’re gonna stop comin’ this way, y’know. Take ships or somethin’. An’ I ain’t no sailor, me.”
There was some laughter at that, and echoes of agreement. And hesitation, as well.
“But if we don’t, they could… find us, couldn’t they? Come back with more soldiers, more mercenaries?” One of the bandits, a leaf girl with sleek, short-cropped brown hair glanced around her shoulder at the rest of the camp, were Talin might be found.
Ouen just shrugged. “And start a war? I mean, just imagine that, a big troop of Oban mercenaries marchin’ around. Y’think folks gonna take kindly to that? Not if it’s on account of some bandits, naw. ‘specially not bandits like us. But murders, well… that’s a whole other matter. Times are changin’, anyhow. Folks ‘round here got Oban friends now. I got Oban friends, even. And I ain’t gonna take kindly to them who cut ‘em down just on account of ‘em being Oban, or rich, or even a tad little bit nasty. If they got robbed and tossed around, well, that I might laugh at. But not killin’, naw.”
To be entirely fair, he wasn’t even sure where he drew the line between what he thought they could get away with, and what he couldn’t. But just as he had when he was younger, he spoke with the lazy, devil-may-care conviction that seemed to be infectiously convincing, inconsistencies be damned.
His little group nodded, and got back on the topic of making fun of the last noble ‘lady’ they had encountered, who had shrieked and clung to her terrified perzi as they stripped her of her jewels.
_________[words | 1190]
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Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2015 9:33 am
══ PRP ═══════════════════════════════════════ _________HEAVY BURDEN_________Ouen & Eadenur (Bushi)
_________Location: Tale
_________Link
Ouen is sent by Talin to sell some loot to a contact of his -- a man named 'Bushi'. After a none-too-pleasant journey hauling a sack of luxury trinkets over to meet the man in Tale, Ouen's surprised to learn just how much money Talin makes by selling the stuff... money that he knows the rest of the bandits, nor the poor people they're supposed to be helping, ever see. After speaking to Bushi about the whole business of trading in stolen goods, Ouen admits that Talin is too violent and unstable to be considered the 'good guy' he pretends to be in order to keep some of the heat off his band... and takes leave on a somewhat sour note, questioning his involvement with the man.
_________[ complete ]
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Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2015 11:48 am
══ PRP ═══════════════════════════════════════ _________BIG ENOUGH TO RIDE_________Ouen & Arronthain
_________Location: ?
_________Link
_________[ in progress ]
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Posted: Wed Dec 09, 2015 8:48 am
══ SOLO ═══════════════════════════════════════
_________CHARITABLE ENDEAVOR
_________Location: Jauhar
Things were going… well, pretty well for Talin’s bandits.
They had built up quite a reputation in the lands where they worked, but Talin’s strategy of appeasing the populace by sharing out loot and targeting unlikeable Obans and Alkidikes was keeping some of the serious pressure off their backs. To date, they had not had any major run-ins with angry militias or bounty hunters, although Ouen was sure that some of that was due in great part to the fact that Talin had been quite careful about keeping their hideouts… well, hidden.
After all, there were plenty of Oban bounty hunters who wouldn’t care one way or the other if Talin gave out food to Shifter villagers.
Ouen kept an eye out for those. He still, for the most part, distrusted any armed Oban he saw. He hadn’t yet met one who hadn’t offended him. The Obans he met that he did like were all… well, dancers, coincidentally, and likely exceptions to the rule. Keelthy’s explanation of his parents’ low opinion of his chosen profession seemed to confirm this suspicion, and Kalliope was… well, she was young, and hadn’t even seen some of the Oban violence that went on before her time.
So he was careful. He listened. And, for a long while, he heard little.
* * *
When he did hear about a band of Oban thugs knocking around the borderlands, it was not in the circumstances he would have expected.
The Obans were not, apparently, on the search for Talin and his band. Judging by some of the inn-talk that was summarised to him, they knew that the band was in the area, but they teased them behind their backs as a bunch of ‘low-bred hoodlums’ -- a term that made Ouen tense in sharp anger. But there was no one to argue with, for the Obans had long since left the inn, and the portly shifter bar-maid was simply recounting the events of the previous night.
“They’re all ‘nobles’, as they call themselves in Oba.” She rolled her eyes. “You know, vain little boys with rich parents? They all bought themselves some shiny swords and now they think they can march around and own any town they like. Hmph!”
“You know where they went?” Ouen leaned against the counter, fingers tracing the side of the clay cup he drank from. “I’d like to show ‘em what I think of ‘em.”
“Oh, I hope you do!” The barmaid nodded, topping up his drink with a wink. “They sure could use a run-in with someone of your kind. Show ‘em what a real shifter looks like, since all they dare to do is pick on prentices and old ladies. Hah! Well, listen, I’m not sure about this but I think they went east a little. There’s a village there, and I’ve been hearing that maybe they’ve sort of… taken up like they’re kings, there. That’s the word I heard yesterday after they left, at least. They’ve commandeered the elder’s house to themselves and are ordering people around like they own the place.”
Ouen sneered and knocked back his drink, reaching for his lance. “I’ll show ‘em.”
The barmaid pursed her lips and looked him over. “Well, mister, now don’t you take no offence, because you sure look like a mighty competent man. But there’s six of them, you hear, and I’m thinking their rich ‘noble’ parents spent some mighty good money getting their boys trained up and the like. So don’t you be marching in all on your lonesome. It won’t end well, and that’ll be a real shame.”
The lancer frowned at first, sullen at the suggestion that he couldn’t handle six Oban thugs. Then again… well, maybe he couldn’t. It wounded his pride to think that, but to be fair, the only fights he’d ever won were the ones he fought together with the band. On his own, his luck so far had not been the greatest.
“Arright,” He nodded. “Thass reasonable. I got some friends of mine that I c’n call up, to even things out.”
* * *
They weren’t friends, exactly -- not all of them. But they were fellow bandits from Talin’s band, although they had more in common with each other than with their leader. Two of them Ouen had gotten mighty close to, and two others he was starting to win over. They tended to take his side in some of the (increasingly frequent) disagreements he was having with Talin, and they were the ones the trusted enough to suggest this little endeavour to.
Suggesting, however, was only part of the effort. Ouen had led little raids of his own before, but as he had expected, it didn’t take the bandits long to figure out that this wasn’t quite the same thing.
“But they aren’t merchants. They don’t have anything we can take, save for a handful of swords maybe. They’re just some thugs sitting up in a treehouse.”
“An’ if it was your treehouse, Laya?” Ouen spit back, standing firm. “If it was your village? Just last week we done an’ brought them villages goods and supplies. What good’s that to ‘em if some other bunch of Oban fatcats squander it all for ‘em?”
Laya shrugged uncertainly. She was a good woman, Ouen felt, but the idea of doing anything for the principle of it seemed rather new to it. She’d been raised a thief all her life, and had a selfishness about her that she couldn’t quite shake.
“Well, what do you want to do? Just up and kill them? I thought you didn’t want no killings.” Tihaya, a leaf girl, spoke up now.
Ouen nodded. “Naw, I don’t. But we can rough ‘em up a little, send ‘em runnin’ back home to their parents. Give ‘em a lesson to think about.”
“I’m all for it.” The third of the group was Nession, a shifter who fought with heavy gauntlets. “But Talin won’t ever agree to it. There’s no money to make here, no loot… it’s just charity. And you know he isn’t the most charitable of men.”
“Well, to hell with him.” Ouen flicked a dismissive wrist. “You don’t ask fer his permission to eat or ta take a damn piss, do ya? So we ain’t gonna ask him for his opinion on this matter either. Just call it a… personal charitable endeavour, or whatever ya like. We ain’t his slaves. We do what we want.”
_________[words | 1077]
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Posted: Thu Dec 24, 2015 6:12 am
══ EVENT SOLO ══════════════════════════════════ _________MONSTERS?
Suhuba With the recently discovered Yaeli, the land of Tendaji has been abuzz with talk and gossip about their new neighbors. They're odd, they're strange and skittish, their eyes glow - but that can't possibly be true most say - the word on the street is that they're starting to leave their island. Those that had met the Yaeli know that it's an odd thing to hear. They were terrified of the outsiders, why would they leave their safe villages... Rumors are filling the toxic island where the Alkidikes extremists were banished along with the Matron. Rumors of monsters clawing their way out of the earth with oil black skin and glowing evil eyes that are even weirder than the strange monsters that landed upon their shores just one year ago. The Yaeli say that their gaze can steal the soul of any person dumb enough to get too close and they're vicious beings trying to take their children. These rumors have reached the main land as well, mostly through the few Yaeli that have decided they would rather face the scary but similar earthling races than to have to find out what the terrifying monsters want with them and their land. Is there any truth to these rumors or are the Yaelians seeing things?
_________Location: Jauhar/Oba borderFor a short while after the departure of the exiled alkidikes, there was little talk about the whole matter of where they were going and how things might go for them. For the most part the bandits only wanted to talk about their part in the battle -- and those stories, of course, were by this point quite exaggerated re-tellings of the actual events.
But, slowly and steadily, other news began to reach even their secret hideouts.
“Well, of course they sent them to an island.” Tihaya shrugged. “I mean, they wouldn’t just have sent them off into the middle of nothing. If that was the case, it would have been better to kill them at the point of our blades then to let them die out there, slowly like that. Jeez! I would rather fall on my own sword than die at sea. It sounds like a horrible place.”
“The sea’s not horrible.” Ouen rolled his eyes. “How can you say somethin’ like that, anyhow? You ain’t even seen the sea once.”
“Well, it sounds awful.” The girl flicked her wrist in dismissal, as if she had no interest to ever go see it. “Who ever had a use for so much water?”
They were gathered around a fire in the bandits’ border camp. There were a couple fires here, and several gathered groups, but this one in particular was made up once again of those that seemed to favor Ouen as a leader… even though he technically wasn’t. There were six of them now -- seven counting Ouen himself, and eight if you counted Kalliope too (although, with her being here against her own will and simply siding with Ouen because he was the better of two evils, Ouen hesitated to count her in).
“Well, that’s beside the point, anyway.” Laya announced. It was she who was bringing news, anyway, having returned after visiting her family in Neued. “The fact of the matter is, the Alkidikes are settled now on a big island called Yael. And it is just the damn strangest place I ever heard of. First of all, there’s earthlings there. But if you ask me, they don’t even sound like proper earthlings. They have glowing eyes, like spirits, and black crystals. Black! Man, but those must be some ugly folks.”
There were some whispers among the group. Ouen quirked an eyebrow. He didn’t like judging folks before he met them, but… they did sound sort of strange.
“But that’s not even half of it. This island they live in, it isn’t proper land, even. The ground is made of stone. Solid stone, that’s the word. And it’s full of caves. Thousands, thousands of caves.”
Here Ouen felt that he had to interject, shrugging his lean shoulders in a show of indifference. “Aw, c’mon, Laya. Every place gonna be different. Jauhar ain’t much like Zena, I bet. Zena’s all mountains, an’ from what I done heard, mountains be mostly rock too. An’ sand is just little teeny-tiny rocks. Jauhar’s got plenty rocks too, anyway. Rocks don’t make no place any stranger than any other one.”
“You haven’t heard the rest of it!” Laya lifted her hands defensively. “There are monsters in these rocks!”
“And there’s mammu in Zena.” Ouen rolled his eyes. “Or janarim in Oba. Everyplace got it’s creatures too.”
“These aren’t creatures, Ouen. These are real-life monsters. Even the Yaeli oddlings think they’re monsters. And they showed up just only when the Alkidikes did, so what the Yaeli say, it’s that their land is cursed now because of those mean bug-girls. Word is they’re big and black and evil, and that they steal souls and eat little childern.”
Here Ouen laughed again. “Eat children? Laya, that’s what my momma done told me about radaku.”
He reached down to run a hand across Shenandoah’s dappled pelt, the animal now asleep in the warmth of the fire. Radaku had no need for petty earthling gossip, and had gotten so used to the animated bandit chatter that he had no problem sleeping right through it.
“Well the Yaeli aren’t all children, Ouen. They’re real scared of these monsters. Some of them are even leaving their island to come here in Tendaji, and from what I hear, they aren’t the adventuring type. Otherwise we would have seen them by now, wouldn’t we have? No, they’ve been hiding there, all safe on their island until now.”
“Well,” Ouen drawled, shifting around to get into a comfortable reclining position, thinking he might take Shenandoah’s example and doze off. “All this sounds mighty unusual, I’ll grant you. But I certainly ain’t gonna be gettin’ scared or no monsters, not till I sees one myself. An’ as for them Yaeli… well, if they comin’ this way maybe one day we’ll all meet one, an’ see how odd they really are. Glowin’ eyes, huh!”
_________[words | 819]
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Posted: Mon Jan 04, 2016 11:33 am
══ MOUNT SOLO ═══════════════════════════════════════
_________FOUR LEGS
_________Location: Jauhar
“Your mother’s home was burned down.”
The message took a long time to reach him.
It was all his fault, of course. He hadn’t spoken to his mother in years -- and not out of spite. She had done him no wrong. He had simply… well, he had gotten carried away with his own life, and forgotten about hers. She was a fair mother, but his wild heart had him living like an orphan in the jungle ever since he was a youngling. At first it was just for a few days at a time, maybe a few weeks. But then one day as a prentice simply left and did not return, just because he was old enough to survive and care for himself and he didn’t see any reason not to go off and do so.
But what about Shiyana? What about his mother? What had she thought when her son did not return for months, for years? Once in a blue moon Ouen would remember her, and wonder. And then he’d decide that maybe she had assumed he was dead, or just plain lost to the world like his nameless father. Maybe she had forgotten him. He was alright with that, he figured. She was a good mother, but one couldn’t go on mothering forever.
“A gang of bandits came to rob her. She gave them all they asked for, and they burned her house for sport.”
The message took a long time to reach him, but it did come.
And that meant that she had not forgotten him. She had sent out a message, in the distant hope that someone had seen him, that someone would find him.
“It was a few months ago now. She didn’t know where you were.”
Ouen peered at the shifter who told him the message. He worked at the store in this little village, where Ouen sometimes picked up Talin’s gang. Ouen didn’t mind him -- he was easy on the eyes, and they had spent an enjoyable night together a while back. He had heard word of this message in Neued, and had been waiting for Ouen to come to town since.
“Does she… need my help?”
The shopkeeper shrugged. Who knew how many people this message had passed through already. “She sent the message.”
Who knew how many people had heard that his mother was in trouble, when he was the very last to know?
His hand tightened into a fist. He turned on his heel and ran.
* * *
Running! What kind of idiot was he, running to Ast. It would take him days to reach it like this, through the thick of the jungle. He hadn’t brought supplies, he hadn’t brought anything but his lance and all his usual equipment. And sure, sure, Ouen didn’t need anything to survive in the jungle. But wandering through the canopy, picking fruit and sleeping when he wanted, that was one thing. Running straight through was a whole other matter, and one that was considerably more tiring.
He rested on a gnarled and tangled root, breathing hard in the blue-pink glow of the undergrowth. It was hot. It was hard to breathe.
A long nuzzle poked him gently in the side.
Shenandoah, of course, had had no trouble keeping pace. The radaku had grown strong and tall now, his long tail held out for balance and his paws moving smoothly over the roughest terrain. He looked almost puzzled to find his Shifter companion so ragged and breathless.
“Well, don’tcha be lookin’ at me like that. You’s got four legs, ya know, an’ I only got two. If I had yours legs, I’d be halfway to Ast by now, I -- “
He stopped, and measured out his words. He… did have Shenandoah’s legs, didn’t he? He had had them all this time, snuggled up against him in the cold of every night. They had been far too small and slender most of the time, of course, as the young animal grew alongside him. And while the radaku grew, so too did Ouen, himself getting lanky with muscle. But now finally it seemed to him that they had about equaled out in size, what with the radaku now as big as some of the other mounts he had seen.
“Well, dang, Shen. You kin carry me, can’tcha?”
The fact of the matter was, they’d been getting ready for it, a bit. Ouen had been getting the radaku to start carrying things on his back -- just packs and supplies and loot from their raids and things like that. But he hadn’t yet gotten onto the beast’s back himself. He knew plenty of others who had rushed the whole matter, just jumped right on and figured it out after… but it seemed to him like a rude thing to do to a creature who had been his friend for a good long while.
Still. There was an issue at hand, and these were special circumstances.
He got to his feet and stood by the radaku, resting a hand on his back to try and communicate his plan. The animal turned his neck to look at him, curious.
Working slowly, the shifter lifted himself belly-down onto the radaku’s back, sort of hanging there like a very long and awkward pack. Shenandoah took a few uncertain steps, but stilled soon after. Ouen then swung his leg around, and found himself sitting snugly on the creature’s back, leaning low to hug his neck and shoulders. This was new to him. The balance didn’t come naturally. But Shenandoah was used now to carrying things, and seemed to have figured out the idea. He let out a happy whirr, realizing now that he no longer had to wait up for his slow, two-footed companion, and took off through the trees.
Ouen squeezed his eyes shut and held on tight.
_________[words | 974]
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Posted: Sun Jan 31, 2016 7:04 am
══ GROWTH SOLO ═══════════════════════════════════════ _________AIN'T GONNA STAND TO IT
_________Location: JauharQuote: Ouen has had enough of living under Talin's control. He wants to avenge his mother and attack another bandit group, so he gathers up his allies from Talin's camp and asks them to come with him -- even though they all know that it's likely the last straw, and that they will have to deal with the fallout from Talin's anger when they return. Ouen shows growth by taking charge, by realizing that he needs to make up for having abandoned his mother all this time, and making it clear to himself and his allies (and enemies) that he doesn't care much for life as a profiteering bandit.
“You look like your father.”
Ouen shrugged and looked at the ground. She had never told him who her father was, and in his adulthood he had just about forgotten the matter. Who cared who his father was, anyway? Some deadbeat who didn’t care enough for his kid to stick around and see him grow. Ouen wouldn’t have asked for much, as a son. It wouldn’t have taken much to be a decent father -- just someone to show him the jungle, someone to name all the plants and animals of his home, someone to teach him how to climb a tree and pick the best fruit off the top of the canopy. The things that Ouen had learned alone… a father could have been there for, if he cared for it.
So what did it mean now, to look like him? Ouen didn’t know. He didn’t want to look like this father he never knew. He wanted to be himself. He wanted to care for his folk.
He hadn’t been doing a good job of it, had he?
Here was his mother, aging and weak -- living in a small tree-shack that had been given to her by the villagers in Ast as charity, after her house had been torched by malicious bandits.
It gave him a sour taste in his mouth. He knew the bandits in question hadn’t been any of Talin’s -- they didn’t operate this far into the jungle normally, and they wouldn’t have chosen to steal a poor shifter woman like Shiyana. His childhood home had been much nicer than this shack, with three interconnected ‘rooms’ built around the bend of an old jungle-tree, and an open platform for cooking and entertaining in the middle of it all -- but it hadn’t been anything luxurious. His mother owned some small bits of jewelry, maybe some finer clothing, and that was all. Nothing to ruin a life over.
But yet, somehow… it was not too hard to imagine some of his own band doing something like this. Not out of rational thinking, of course. Just to wreak havoc and show off their power, as Talin and his underlings were apt to do. So it could have been them, even if it wasn’t this time, and that thought made him sick.
“Aw, ma.” He finally shrugged. “Where’s they gone, the bastards who done do this to ya? I’s gonna track ‘em down an’ make ‘em pay for it.”
She sighed, and reached out to take his hand. At first he thought that her fingers were much smaller and finer than he remembered them to be… then he realized that it was his that had grown big and spidery, calloused from his grip on his lance.
“Don’t, Ouen. There’s no need. It won’t help, and you’ll get hurt.”
“Ma.” He insisted. “Y’can’t just let them rabble get away with this. You’s want them to do this to other folks? Your friends? Them neighbours who gave this hut to ya, so you’s can have a roof over your head at least? If they done this once, they gonna do it again. Someone gotta tell ‘em that it ain’t no good doin’ all this, an’ that they ain’t gonna get away with it like it ain’t nothin’. An’ ma, c’mon, don’tcha see me? I ain’t so little no more. I ain’t so easy to get hurt. An’ I got… I got friends.”
That was no lie -- for among Talin’s bandits, there were several now who were more loyal to him than their supposed leader. They had already followed his orders before, even when they knew that Talin would never ask for the same thing. They had worked for him, and not for money even -- for the raids that Ouen now lead often had less to do with loot and more to do with vengeance against the corrupt and the injust. And he knew, even as he promised it to his mother, that they would once again follow him to set things right here… even though they all knew that they were quickly reaching the end of Talin’s very short fuse.
He didn’t tell Shiyana this. She had no call to worry about it.
“Tell me, ma. What’d they call themselves? I ain’t gonna do nothin’ stupid, ma.”
“You’re going to kill them.” She burst out in tears, looking at his lance.
“Ma.” He tensed his grip on the weapon. “I ain’t. I ain’t like that. This here weapon can do lots of things when it comes to a-keepin’ someone down. Me an’ my friends, we ain’t murderers. And you do be sure an’ know that we had chances to be murderers, lotsa them. But we ain’t like that. We’ll track down these here bandits an’ we’ll grag ‘em right back, I promise you. An’ the elders can decide what it is they wanna do with ‘em, how it is they want justice to be served. An ain’t nobody gonna kill or be killed, mamma. Not by my blade or any other.”
She looked up at him again, drying her tears against her sleeve.
“Maybe you don’t look so much like your father.”
* * *
Talin was not in camp, but the cloud of his anger hovered over it all the same.
“That man’s got fury in his eyes like only he can have it.” Laya told him as he walked through camp and gathered those he knew were loyal to him… and a few of the ones who hadn’t openly switched allegiances yet, but seemed to be lending a sympathetic ear to his side of things. “A while ago he just up and stormed out of camp like he was burning. If I’d seen smoke rising up from the top of his head, boy, I wouldn’t have been surprised.”
Many of the other bandits had similar reports, and as a fairly sizeable group began to gather around one of the fires, their leader’s temper was about all they could talk about. A great deal of that was because they had some idea that the thing that Ouen was pulling them together for certainly wasn’t going to make Talin any happier… because Talin didn’t want Ouen pulling anyone together for anything, that much was well-known. Ouen wasn’t even supposed to be in charge of anything. He was just another bandit like them… and yet there they sat, looking up at the tall shifter and his big gray radaku, and they listened.
“You’s all know why you’s here, an’ they ain’t.” Ouen started, gesturing at the dark faces that stared at them from other parts of the camp. “An’ we ain’t been talkin’ about it much, I know. Just kinda lettin’ things slide, followin’ Talin’s orders sometimes an’ sometimes we doin’ our own thing. An’ we’s all know now he ain’t stupid. He knows what’s goin’ on. An’ it ain’t gonna be long ‘till he up an’ does anythin’ ‘bout it. An’ then the time will come when all of you’s gonna have to make a choice, whether you’s wanna stick by him, or stick together. Now you’s all know that I don’t take too kindly to folks tellin’ other folks what they gotta do, so I believe in your’s own abilities to do an’ make this choice how you gotta. But folks, you gonna have to make that choice today.”
There was an immediate rumble among the small (but altogether sizeable) gathering -- with some bandits, including Laya, Tihaya and others immediately announcing their intention to side with Ouen, while others seemed plagued with doubt. But the shifter held his arm up for silence.
“I ain’t the kind to rush folks like this ‘ere. But the fact is, I’s got another job for those of you who’s willin’. You know the whole time I been sayin’ to you, how’s you gonna feel if it’s your family gets robbed an’ kicked an’ pillaged? Well here it goes an’ does an’ happens to me. You’s all done an’ heard of them other bandits, call themselves the ‘Hounds’? Well they done and robbed my ma. An’ my ma, she just her own little lady an’ she ain’t ever had riches to pile up. But they went and robbed her of the few pleasant things she had, an’ then you know what’s they done did? They done burned her house. That’s my house they done burned. An’ so I’m askin’ you to set out with me an’ hunt down these there ‘Hounds’. An’ I wantcha all to know that when I’m askin’ you to do this, I do this knowin’ that I would do the same for yous all and your ma. It ain’t right, doin’ this to simple folk who can’t barely get by. I ain’t gonna stand to it.”
He hefted his lance, the blunt end pressing hard into the camp’s packed-earth ground, and surveyed the group. Some, like the ones who had shouted earlier, were already announcing their allegiance to him and hefting their own weapons. Others glanced doubtfully at the shadows and the angry faces that surrounded them. And yet more were quiet, but nodded to themselves, and seemed to come to some sort of decision.
* * *
When he left Talin’s camp to head for Ast a second time, he was no longer alone, clinging to his radaku’s back. With him marched some old allies and some new ones. Not all had come, as he had known would happen… but there were perhaps more of them now than he had expected. And as they walked past the sullen guards, an involuntary cheer rose up amongst them. They walked with their heads high, because they weren’t slinking out to steal and the plunder; they were going to set things right in Ast. And as to what Talin would have to say about that when he returned… well, they would see when that time came. For the time-being, the angry man did not seem particularly important.
_________[words | 1707]
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Posted: Sun Feb 21, 2016 8:21 am
══ EVENT SOLO (BATTLE) ══════════════════════════════════ _________AT LARGE
Quote: Can be used toward Battle req (or RP req only if done with a friend)
Solo word minimum is 500, RP post minimum is 7It was bound to happen eventually. With rumors of great beasts roaming the shores of Yael, many mainlanders flocked across the sea to capture the exotic beasts. In no time at all, they returned with large scaled monsters, dangerously translucent serpents, and turtles that carried the earth. These traders traveled across the Mainland to parade the beasts, going from Matori to Zena and everywhere between. Soon enough, everyone had either seen the Yaeli beasts or at least heard of them. And they were sure to hear about the beasts when they escaped. With such little knowledge of the foreign creatures, the traders underestimated the animals. In no time at all, the Yaeli beasts escaped into the wilderness and ended up near your location. With new creatures all but knocking on your door, what do you do? Do you dare to try and tame them, or do you run them off back into the wilderness? You better hurry, because these creatures are lost and scared, and are sure to cause some damage before they are captured once more....
_________Location: JauharEvent post
result : fail
They had returned from their raid on the bandits that had burned down his mother’s home, simultaneously elated and worried about the consequences. Talin was out, word was, on a rather bloody mission… and chaos was sure to ensure upon his return.
But for the time-being it was quiet, and Ouen wandered through the jungle to think.
Shenandoah padded along beside him -- now too tall for the shifter to rest his hand on his back like he once used to. But the radaku was quiet and curious as ever, moving soundlessly over the undergrowth and letting out a questioning whirr only when he found something he wanted Ouen to look at. So, rest assured, Ouen was quite surprised to hear the animal let out a startled bark and dart around a tree. Why, Shen hadn’t done anything like that since he was a pup, back when he had darted around Ouen’s legs everytime there was something new and scary in sight. These days, Shen was more than likely to bound ahead and investigate everything long before Ouen even got to it. So what in the world was it that had gotten the radaku all riled up like th --
“Aw, heck! What is that?”
The very thing that had sent Shenadoah scrambling, however, quickly had Ouen taking a step back himself. A long, stringy sort of animal was sitting on the roots of a tree, shaking its tail-end at them. At least, Ouen thought that was its tail. It was all tail as far as he could see, and like no creature he’d ever seen before. And that was saying something! Ouen had grown up here, amongst every sort of thing that crawled and climbed and darted around the crystal growths. So where had this thing come from? And… well, was it dangerous?
It certainly looked angry.
Ouen flipped his spear around so that he was holding the blunt stick-end towards the creature, and stretched out to poke at it (this being, of course, the scientifically best method to figure out what something was). The creature stood up higher on its tail and shook about even more, emitting a surprisingly loud rattle. It did not, however, strike. Shenandoah stuck his head out from behind the tree and watched cautiously, obviously curious but still concerned by this presence of this new thing he had no knowledge of.
“Hey there, uh… thing.” Ouen muttered, taking a careful step towards it. It was a mighty pretty looking creature, really, what with all those crystals up and down its side, and he wouldn’t mind taking it back to camp if he could. Maybe he could take it back to a town, too, and find out if anyone knew that the heck it was. And where had it come from, at that?
He untied the sash around his waist, and, waiting for a good shot, threw the thing on top of the creature. His plan had been to gather it up in a bundle before it could react, but… the thing was fast! In a heartbeat it decided to stop trying to scare them, and darted quickly out from under the sash. It moved, in an odd, winding way (and surprisingly quickly given that it had no legs to speak of) over the top of the tree-roots and into a narrow cranny.
“Well.” Ouen shrugged, picking his sash back up. “That was mighty a mighty odd dang thing.”
_________[ words | 576 ]
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Posted: Wed Feb 24, 2016 5:17 pm
══ BATTLE ═══════════════════════════════════════ _________vs. TALIN_________Ouen & Talin
_________Location: Jauhar
_________Link
_________[ in progress ]
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Posted: Wed Mar 02, 2016 4:36 pm
══ PRP ═══════════════════════════════════════ _________LITTLE BIT OF CHAOS_________Ouen & Aylin
_________Location: Jauhar, Ast
_________Link
_________[ in progress ]
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Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2016 5:29 pm
══ PRP ═══════════════════════════════════════ _________BAR BRAWL BARONS_________Ouen & Dexurn
_________Location: Matori
_________Link
_________[ in progress ]
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Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2016 7:10 am
══ PRP ═══════════════════════════════════════ _________THE EDGE OF SAND AND SEA_________Ouen & Eleina
_________Location: Matori
_________Link
_________[ in progress ]
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Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2016 7:01 pm
══ EVENT SOLO ══════════════════════════════════ _________REMEMBERING THE PASTQuote: It has been seven long years since the Great Oban Invasion. It almost feels like a dream, considering all of the changes that have occurred in Tendaji since the great war. A new King sits on the Oban throne, and he has opened the boundaries of Oba and Matori. Many already are taking advantage of the open boarders to travel and explore. The world was expanding and changing all things to the massive war of the great nations. Since the war, Tendaji took a stand against the extremist Alkidikes and won. They came together to show a new alliance that many could never dream of. Everything was settling, and now that there finally was peace everyone has begun to to take a moment and remember all that has come and gone. How have the major wars and changes impacted your character these past few years? Are they bitter for their failures or happy about their success? Do they see a peaceful future to come or are they concerned about those who may be still holding grudges?
_________Location: Matori
_________Event post
Matori was so pretty, and its people were so merry, that it was easy, for a while, to forget some less-than-cheerful facts.
He had come here instinctively. He needed a break -- a rest from all the chaos that had come in the wake of his confrontation with Talin. He needed to figure some things out, think about where his head was at, and… well, have a little fun without worrying too much. Matori had seemed like the perfect place. It was sunny, warm, and glittering blue-green. There were busy towns with lots of people to meet, and also quiet, lonesome beaches where you could lie and look at the sky and listen to the surf.
Damn, but it was a beautiful place.
But eventually, when the initial awe of seeing the sea was pleasantly dulled by familiarity, he began to remember those other things.
Matori men and women his age wore scars on their arms and shoulders. He hadn’t been able to pick them out at first, for their skin was so different from his own. In fact, the first time he became aware of them, he felt them rather than saw them -- felt the rough ridges of a whip-cut against the palm of his hand while feeling up a flirty fisherman against a weedy, wet rock. The sensation had startled him, and he pulled his hand away for a moment -- then reached out again upon seeing the sudden darkening on the fisherman’s face, distracting him with a kiss and a smile and a wink and whatever it was that seemed to do the trick.
But he looked, later, in the dawning sunlight. And once he learned to recognize them, he began to see them in other places. He didn’t like it. It made his blood boil.
He’d always hated slavery, of course. The very thought of it had sounded like a pure evil to him, even when he had been a boy. He remembered learning about the Obans and their deeds. He remembered that name, ‘Oban’, sitting like a curse word on his tongue. He would meet decent Obans after that, sure enough, and maybe the name itself had finally been tempered into something more reasonable, more wide-reaching and capable of describing both friends and fiends. But the deed, the slavery itself, that he had never forgotten to hate. Still, it was one thing to hate it in Jauhar, where it was just a word, just a thing for him to orate about to his followers, urging their tempers to rise alongside his…
It was a whole other to be in this once-enslaved land, where the signs of a dark history were everywhere and… and nowhere.
The water earthlings had made quick work of their recovery. They worked hard, but they worked for themselves, and they made a good living. They were quick to welcome him -- armed as he was with his lance, some saw him as an ally of their kind, a member of the group that had fought for their liberation. Ouen didn’t always have the nerve to tell them he had been little more than a mischievous tramp back then, but… well, if he hadn’t been, if he’d been older, and smarter, and stronger -- he would have fought for Matori. So maybe it was just a matter of principle. Anyway, he often regretted not having been involved in the war. All he’d done, at best, was kill one Oban on a fluke, and baffle a group of others as he ‘rescued’ a pack of radaku. And then, after what seemed like a glorious eventuality, the war was over. He became a bandit instead. He lashed out at Oban merchants and mercenaries. That was something, wasn’t it?
Yeah. It was. Maybe Talin called him a coward, sure, maybe Talin thought he was little more than a soft-hearted thief. But Ouen decided that he knew better. Fighting wasn’t something that was done only in wars, for injustices and wrongdoings didn’t wait for wars either. If one was to stand up against injustice, one had to do it every day. One had to organize, to plan, and to act. These things, these sour, bitter evils, they wouldn’t go away without directed action.
And so, sitting on the beaches of Matori and staring out into the hazy horizon, Ouen resolved to do just that. He wasn’t alone -- he had his allies. They were experienced, strong, and good at what they did. Maybe the living they hacked out of serving justice wouldn’t be as rich as what they could get by senseless raiding, but… they’d find other rewards, he was sure.
Like knowing, without a shred of a doubt, that they could make a difference.
_________[ words | 784 ]
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