Welcome to Gaia! ::

Okay, so this is me and kri-pri planning out our entry to the Grand Marshal tournament. We're going to be animating one piece with two characters.

The character that was originally mine is Valeria. Valeria is a semi-deranged murderer, who kills for the fun. She was formally trained by the Assassin's Guild in Orevia, until she was banned for breaking all of their rules. Now she's competing to become the Grand Marshal, because if she succeeds, the Guild will be forced to be subservient to her.

Nik's character is Kit. I'll let him post a description when he replies. ON TO THE ROLEPLAYING.
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((This is long because it's the opening to what I was writing on my own.))

It was not a stormy night, but it was certainly a dark one. The lack of rain did not make the weather pleasant, however. A thick white fog lurked over the city of Orevia, blanketing the dystopian metropolis in a chilling atmosphere. The denizens kept their windows shut and their doors bolted, but the mist was an intruder that could infilitrate any gap. It poured down chimney chutes and seeped under doors.

To see what the fog sees is to see the whole city. Every street, every alley, every sewer and cellar; Every hovel and mansion felt its presence. Even in the Grand Marshal's bedchamber, behind a hundred doors and thousand guards, a few wisps danced along the tile.

But these chambers are not, surprisingly, where our tale begins. If the fog knew this, it would be watching a small forge, many kilometers away. A forge where a man concentrates intensely on the work laid before him.

To see what the man sees is to see a clockwork universe, gears and pistons, springs and levers clicking away in near perfect precision. Except for one thing, somewhere, which grinds a bit off beat. The man scowls in concentration, focusing as a huge pair of tweezers floats into his vision and turns, quite gently, a tiny cog. The grinding halts, and all is right again.

He pulls the magnifying monocle away from his good eye, returning to the land where the device is just a device, small and handheld. He smiles the smile of an engineer who has just done a fine job, a damn fine job, and know the reward is not the payment, but the satisfaction of another piece of universe decoded and understood.

"Quite a spectacular device," He says aloud, "Quite a dangerous devil too. But quite spectacular nonetheless." He turns the machine over, screwing the casing back together and realigning the stock. "Some interesting use of torque in the charging chamber. I would quite like to make some diagrams," he continued, checking it again to ensure he has reassembled it properly.

A pale hand rests on his shoulder, and his customer gently takes it from his hands. It disappears into a pouch, and the man turns his face upward to praise its design once again.

But the words are blocked as the hand moves from his shoulder to his mouth, clamping over it with surprising strength. The other hand returns, and in a swift movement, his throat is cut, blood splattering from the wound. The silencing hand remains tight, and his murderer looks on dispassionately.

To see what his customer sees is to see a horrible world, filled with roaches and vermin. Valeria does not see humans, she sees insects. She sees shortsighted beings crawling and scraping through pitiful lives controlled by marginally more powerful beings that scrape just the same.

Valeria sees what keeps them on their knees. She sees the laws, the rules and the guidlines. She sees the gods, the philosophies, their ethics and moralities. She sees how they are inhibited by barricades of the mind.

She broke them long ago. Her twisted mind, combined with her past, had freed her from these constraints. She truely was free, free to do and take whatever she desired. And with all these cattle around her, she knew that what she desired would never run out.

This man who was now limp in her arms, for example. He had a story. He had been young once, he had learned things and done things and lived the pitiful excuse for a life that so many people lived. Perhaps he had knew love. Perhaps he had a family, a wife and a child. He had secrets, he had friends, he had possessions and a sense of self worth.

And Valeria had taken that all away, and smiled her small smile the whole time. With mere thoughts, she had moved her body, with a mere pull of her arm, she had taken everything that made that man and left only a cooling mass of carbon compounds. It was a high that could not be beaten; the hot blood splattering on her hand, the sight of his face draining to white, these things were her reward for a kill well done.

Gently, she lowered the corpse to the floor. Not out of reverence, but from a habitual need to be silent. She gave his face a final blank look before turning towards the exit, ready to leave with her repaired weapon.

Valeria had been trained by the Assassin's Guild here in Orevia, and by such, lived in a world of stealth, shadow, and near-silence. To her constantly alert ears, the gasp was a gunshot in a monastery.

Valeria ducked behind a furnace, adequate cover from the door across the room. The intake of breath hadn't sounded like someone about to kick the door down and start shooting, but Valeria was still alive because of her caution as well as her skill.

Quietly, she slid the dagger back into its sheath, and drew the device from the bag. It was a nasty looking jumble of iron and brass, mounted on a small wooden stock. Like a cross between a crossbow, a musket, and a steam engine. It was in fact a compact kind of crossbow, cocked with a pump and the aid of some primitive hydraulics. The tension in the complex machinery was enough to send a steel bolt through an inch of cast iron. It was, as the engineer described, a dangerous devil.

Valeria dropped in a bolt, and cocked the hand ballistae with some effort. While her hands took care of that, she was looking carefully out from the cover of her furnace. So low to the ground, she could barely see under the workbench, at a young figure looking through a crack in the door.

A daughter, no doubt, Valeria thought with a smile. Hand ballistae primed and ready, Valeria stepped out into the open again, sighting the short length of the weapon, aimed at the slightly ajar door.

"Come out where I can see you," Valeria said in sugary tones, "Before I put a hole through that door and whatever part of you is past it."

Valeria kept the weapon aimed Kit as she approached, until the barrel's end was just shy of touching her victim's head. Laughing lightly at the shaking child, Valeria circled her, before stopping directly to her right, so that Kit stood between Valeria and the workbench.

The assassin squints, puts both hands on the crossbow, and prepares to fire. The look in her target's eyes is satisfying, but not as satisfying as the look after Valeria lowers her aim and shoots the bolt between Kit's legs. The bolt's heavy fletching snags the bottom of Kit's long jacket just as the tip slams into the workbench, effectively nailing the girl to it.

"Don't worry dear," Valeria says, drawing the still bloody dagger, "You won't be taking much more of my time."

That said, Valeria steps in, blade raised, to bleed Kit out much like her father.

Valeria hissed as the steam seared along her sleeve, the thin leather and fabric shielding her from serious damage, but not putting the attack beneath her pain threshold. She leapt back, clutching her forearm.

When she looked back up at Kit, the girl had somehow assembled a dangerous looking weapon. In mere seconds. Perhaps it was time to go... Save this one for another day.

So Valeria cracked another smile, gave the corpse a kick, and ran for the door. Her footsteps were fast and fleet, and the distance to the door was only a couple of feet. As she opened it, she spun, flinging a seven inch throwing knife straight towards the hose leading from the rusty steam tank, suspending over the coals.

On the street, she jumped to grab hold of the sign pole over the forge, using that to spin herself upwards. She caught the gutter, pulled herself up easily, and then jumped across the narrow alley to catch the edge of the roof opposite. From there, she took off through the forest of smokestacks and chimneys, towards the palace, where a much more important target awaited her.