Powder Miner

Well apparently the puddles of darkness were some sort of... darkness puddle creature thing with weird disc eyes. Wild shit, Jack thought, and then he quite casually whipped his pistol out. Honestly, this was some pretty cool shit. He could stand to fight weird inhuman monsters that weren't the Vanu more. It'd be new stuff, after all. He'd gotten used to seeing and doing the same shit. Jack spun his pistol (which was something of a brick with a stick) in his hands, grinned, adjusted his sunglasses evidently unnecessary. Then, entirely casually, evidently not viewing the shadows as a threat, Jack popped one with a remarkably loud railgun pistol shot. Jack uses Mag-Shot on Neoshadow B for 2d6+DEX (6) damage.

I will support with Mim and Shin.

Lizaveta turned from where she'd been attempting to manhandle Baldur, letting go of him like he was a heated surface when a sword got involved. "Justine, I don't know why in the world we would be able to trust someone just because they're royalty."

Lizaveta was a lot less perturbed by the interruption than some of the others -- after all, she really didn't have much of a life outside of Virtuous to hide, so she didn't have any reflex about being seen. She didn't know how much she trusted Arthur as a person, but he at least seemed genuine about Virtuous... but a lot of her analysis vanished from her head when she saw Baldur push Justine with a staff and then start trying to hold her back -- and Lizaveta proceeded to respond by furrowing her brow and then running up to try and pry Baldur's grasp off of Justine. "YOU do not get to decide who gets to do what!"

Johanna to T25, axe the Scholar a question with the hatchet.

Candide couldn’t help but smile at Rosanne’s saying that he had a knightly air about him — that was something he truly appreciated. “Thank you very much, my Queen. I am twenty-four years of age, for reference.” He frowned, though, at something else she said. “Hmm, is that all of us...? The exact phrasing that I heard was —and please pardon me for repeating this, Your Majesty— ‘why is that black-haired bitch asking about Lancelot?’ It sounds like all of the women of this group in fact have quite brightly-colored hair. ...I wonder if perhaps we are not the only ones here for Lancelot the Black.”

Ceridwen let out a sigh — that had been a frustrating experience overall, but at least she had finally got him. ...and apparently he was coming with them now. Great. Ceridwen let out a second sigh. At least her frayed nerves seemed to have calmed down. Still, they were far from done yet, and now it was back to fully lethal combat. “Well... there’s that. But, um, I’m gonna go help Dulcie!” Ceridwen to V25, toss javelin at the myrm!

Verden heals Argos. Michi goes to X25 and vulneraries Kerr. Kris to AC14. Dulcie takes the Chest Keyring, moves to U25. Fallon to X26.

“I may have fewer years on you than you think. But as for what to do... well, I imagine things will be difficult, but we may need to take a less direct approach. I will continue to listen, but if confronted —unless I suspect it is Lancelot— I will probably ask about other things besides Lancelot and see if I can figure things out from there.” “And, er... this has been bothering me... what do the other retainers actually look like? I was unable to recognize the description one of the villagers gave, because... well, I suppose you can probably imagine why.”

Candide sat for several moments, taking in what seemed to be idle nattering among the people in the square, when he caught a far more important set of phrases. Well, I’m afraid I saw that coming, or something like that. I knew it was a good idea to sit and listen. That much hostility, however... Candide got up from the place he had been sittint, and made his way over to where he remembered the Queen to be. Once he got near her —and once he heard something to confirm that it was her— he spoke. “Your Majesty, I’m afraid that our current strategy is not going to work. I decided to passively listen, and not only has word spread that there are several outsiders looking for Lancelot, but at least one of us seems to have encountered some level of pushback from the townsfolk. I haven’t made any active inquiries, so I can probably continue my more passive approach, but it doesn’t seem wise for me to attempt a direct approach, I’m afraid.”

Lizaveta reacted quite energetically to Mim’s statement, judging by her suddenly sitting up quite straight and smacking her fist into her palm. “Yes!! It looked like... Kane was just willing to let it happen. But I’m not! I think— I think he appreciated us before, Shin. So we just keep at it, right? It’s not right to just watch from the sidelines like the others are doig, and Shin doesn’t deserve to be miserable.”

Lizaveta frowned slightly; she’d only been around Crimson when he was being INCREDIBLY angry. But it was probably best not to argue with Mim on that. “Well... if you don’t mind... I have done a lot of studying about them in the last couple of years, and they’re really horrible. They’ve basically been sucking the money and resources out of the rest of the world for their benefit, and whenever somebody gets in the way of the personal wealth and power of one of their bigger figures, even a little bit, poof, just like that they kill them or jail them and THEN kill them. There’s a lot of people who are in trouble like that, and I want to help as many of them as I can! This is only the start!”

W22, Slim Lance the Scholar after Naomi attacks him.

Johanna tries to hit the Scholar again.

“Yeah! The prison break was my second operation with Virtuous, first if you count the fight we got in along the way as the same. I was really excited for it from the start, honestly. Perus fucks over a lot of people who don’t deserve it, especially in those prisons and— well... I’m ranting to you and you were there. Erm. But... yeah! I genuinely feel good about helping break that place open.”

A slight twisting of Lizaveta’s mouth perhaps gave away what she thought of the “with it being a kingdom and all” bit of things, but she responded nonetheless, more seriously now. “Well, I’ve got my own political reasons. But I think that Virtuous as a whole is kind of trying to do two things. The first is that there’s a lot of tensions Perus has been whipping up, especially with Ria and Vini (that’s where I’m from) and we’re messing with the people warmongering in order to stop the whole world from erupting in war! The second thing we do is to do the right thing, and stand up for people who can’t themselves. That’s why I’m here, and that’s... well, it’s what the prison break thing was SUPPOSED to be but it did seem like you guys had that pretty well in hand, honestly. I think we’re lucky almost all of you joined anyway.”

Lizaveta’s eyebrows raised into her hairline at Mim’s almost sheepish admission that her father would have Fey killed if she abandoned the fluffy girl. Well, that changed her mental estimation of Mim’s class from “small merchantry” just to “merchantry”, and that would change her tactics when she talked to Mim about the Manifesto of the Peasantry, which she of course eventually would, though not right now. Still, Lizaveta recovered from her surprise there relatively quickly, and responded to the rest of what Mim had said. “Ahah, well, it can seem scary but I wouldn’t worry! Aside from, apparently, the obvious exception, people in Virtuous are generally pretty open! Ferdiad and Kane especially. To be honest, I’m kind of glad to have all of you guys joining too, it lets me feel like the lone new girl a bit less to now have been here longer than several people, heheh. I’m looking forward to meeting you all, though.” Though maybe less so for Crimson.

Candide had not been entirely satisfied with the aftermath of things — if he had totally had his way, even more care would have been devoted to those bodies, and the poisoned men would not have been cremated. In the end, though, he realized that that was the best they were probably going to get. The Tsukiochians certainly hadn’t been able to speak for themselves, and his concerns were but one of the group’s. He couldn’t hold it against the Queen too much. It was still a shame, though. “Well, I am off, I suppose. I admit I may find this difficult, but... I am looking greatly forwards to meeting Sir Lancelot the Black. That man is one of the two most famous knights of Tameloc living.” And Candide indeed left, producing a simple but fine dark wood cane from his supplies. On battlefields or in most buildings he had no need for one; his kinesthetic sense had served his motion well in his battling days, and though his blinding had of course damaged it, in open spaces or predictable rooms he had enough left in him to walk with relative ease, steps purposeful but light enough that upon brushing against something he could easily avoid it. Town squares and streets, alas, were an exception. Enough was going on on most given streets that he couldn’t guarantee he wouldn’t run into some bystander, or trip over some obstacle. He knew the ebbs and flows of battle enough to at least roughly predict where people would be at any given moment, but common foot traffic was a different matter. It was, frankly, somewhat humiliating that he had to resort to this, but he could at least hope he had some poise to himself nonetheless. He could hope. Candide made his way to a corner of the town square, found somewhere to sit, and simply listened. That was something he’d always done well with, after all, and it was something he hadn’t lost.

Tim Randomness Roll: 67, 7 It’s when he’s around four meters into the earth that Tim realizes there’s a rather serious problem facing him. Not too terribly long after putting the arch on the dirt “roof” over his head, Tim glanced backwards — and though the hole to the open air WAS there, instead of a tiny little bit of neat staircase leading back up, somehow it had transformed into one of those mysterious Escherian illusion staircase things that go up and up in a single square eternally but never go anywhere. It hurt his brain to look at, but it was frankly kind of impressive, though he had absolutely no idea what had happened. It would probably be difficult to actually cross, though. Azgrurk Goggy Crafting Roll: 17 vs 15 Quality: 27 Random Bitz: 70, 100 OH FUCK Essence: 5+5 vs 1 Azgrurk found himself unusually deep in thought. There were actually quite a few things that these strange mostly-humies had stockpiled in their ships, and looking at the sheer magnitude of the materials in the area, Azgrurk couldn’t help but find it kind of a waste. So many amazing things that the humies could be making... but they didn’t appear to be doing so. Well, Captain-General Azgrurk was just going to have to show them how Orks did things. Azgrurk scooped up several pieces of the rapidly-altering metal, both gold and steel, and stomped out from the bus to the more open areas of the world, to do his work. He dumped his materials on the ground, and lapsed into clear concentration, observing the time fragments and the gun in turn, and then slowly, deliberately, got to work. Kusuke and Satomi Satomi lapsed into thought at the words of her time-traveling friend and of the metal lady. ”I don’t think it makes sense for it to be any sort of even compression of space, at least by consistent measurements. It seems kind of strange that whatever movement you were trying to make earlier almost rammed directly into me, Kusuke, a bit of an odd coincidence, and that her recorded measurements change. I think maybe whatever’s going on, and the feeling kind of gives me this hunch too, is something more unsta—“ Everyone Anybody who happened to be watching Azgrurk would see him slowly take his arms and just roughly but pensively sweep a collection of the timefucked metal fragments and one of the pistols from the bus together. Then, they would see several glocks suddenly sprouting outwards from the original, gold and steel glocks, stacking atop each other as they rapidly multiplied and multiplied until they created a seven-foot-tall humanoid form, made entirely of glocks that shifted and self-destructed and created more glocks anew. It stretched its limbs out— —and EVERYBODY, including Tim from his underground position, heard an absolutely deadening cacophony of gunfire, as tens of guns fired and fired and fired and in fact never stopped firing holy fuck the GUNSHOTS they are absolutely everywhere there are so MANY they are so LOUD. Somehow, the many many many Glock bullets all being fired managed to miss everybody: though there were a few close calls, not one so much as grazed skin, even if the portlier of the two men on the rocks, Gogo, got a nick in the rim of his bowler hat. The GLOCKMAN stood at attention and looked up at Azgrurk, bullets still flying fucking everywhere but still missing everyone and everything the group cared about. ”WHAT IS GOING ON” ”SOMETHING NEW” ”YEAH” Azgrurk has gained a minion! If Goggy doesn’t want it, someone else can claim it, and otherwise I will be in charge of it.

Mim didn’t say anything about her room, and that was nice. Plus she wanted to talk about something Liza was quite frankly very happy about, so that worked for her~ “Well, I admittedly haven’t been here anywhere as long as some of the others, but as far as I’ve seen, yeah! I really appreciate it honestly. Kane really likes to have everybody eating together, and I think it’s Ferdiad who does the cooking — and he’s reslly good at it! So it’s a pretty nice thing.”

Lizaveta was the first one to get back up to the room she was now sharing with Mim -- admittedly, there wasn't really much up here to even tidy up, but she felt obligated to do something. What the red-jacketed girl ended up doing was just a bit of miscellaneous, minor tidying, straightening out a stack of books in the corner, making sure the box that contained her clothing didn't look messy, and making sure that her covers were straight. And those three things were the only things that Lizaveta did, because she currently had no possessions to her name, let alone the room, besides her clothing, mask, and books. This meant that Lizaveta found herself awkwardly looking at the mostly-empty room, shuffling in place and waiting for Mim to come up. Even though private property ought not be the way by which someone was judged, and even though she would not stand for and had not stood for Baldur doing exactly that... well, she still found herself kind of embarrassed to have so utterly little on display. "..."

Candide's mouth curled into a decided frown at Blodeuyn's suggestion. "Burning the bodies? That would be a grave disrespect to the dead. I hope that you are not in the habit of thinking of those you face on the battlefield as less important than animals. They are foreigners and dead to a man, so we obviously cannot send the bodies back... but it would be far from impossible to bury them in graves or, though absolutely not ideal, a mass grave at the least."

"I would think... we should not hate them, yet we should be resolute. They are but soldiers, after all, and simply doing what is their own duty, but they are, as the Queen says, here to invade Tameloc. So we do ours. I find it likely that even the invaders themselves would expect no different from us."

Candide closed his eyes-- no, he realized, he didn't close his eyes, he just moved the few remaining muscles around his eyes a little. That caused him to sigh -- he had been living like this for quite some time, but nonetheless sometimes his thoughts didn't quite catch up. Nonetheless, he spoke. He did have something to say, after all. "I think that it is admirable. A sense of duty, even unto death. It is not very far removed from what a knight is."

Lizaveta looked at Shin seriously -- it was impolite of her not to respond to Mim, but she felt like this required her full attention, so she spoke quietly but warmly to Shin. "Shin, look at me. You don't need to worry about troubling us, okay? I know you're worried about it, and worried about when I got hit, but I did that because it was the right thing to do, okay? It isn't right that you should have to feel like this, or that you should just let people walk over you. You're not worthless just because you're not like Baldur, or Crimson. And you shouldn't have to think you are."