[IC] TotM:DC "Terraria: A fresh start"

[Sutoratosu]

"....Its... Over..." Lucille leaned more on her cane by the minute. Blood trickled from one nostril, staining the snow red. Every breath dulled the edge of her senses. This had been close. Far too close. But the plan had still worked. Almost without a second thought, she exhaled a bit heavier, and a green mist began to fall upon her own body. But even the breath could only dull the pain. With a trembling hand, she retrieved the instrument, probing the spiders mind to know the extent of it's injuries....

 

At the same time, a very familiar, and very coy steel pigeon swooped over the party, just as a small green dragon flew over and began to spray a healing mist. 

     "It's Done." Vera transmitted "The spider is ours. I don't think I could convince it to leave this area for more than maybe a day at most, so chances are the only time its gonna be able to help is during the siege itself... but that's probably for the best. Brachus will tend to your wounds, I'll do what I can to fix this thing up in the meanwhile. We'll have to leave immediately once everyone's able to travel; it's starting to get late, and there's still a lot of walking to do."

 

The green dragon, as the Pigeon had instructed, was already finishing up bringing jun back from her near dead state, quickly focusing his breath on the next most wounded of the party.

 

In the meantime a certain Cat Dragon was picking over some of what dropped from the fight...

 

Lucille starts healing the Borean Strider using the Heal Kazoo! Brachus starts healing the party with his Restorative Breath!

 

Do collects 2 Ice Shards and 2 pieces of Dense Ice for Lucille!

[Projeck]

"I'm uh... I'm doing kind of poorly over here."

Calvera grabbed her arm, and winced in pain. The adrenaline was wearing off, and the pain was coming to her.

 

[Sutoratosu]

And so Calvera is the very next one young Brachus gets to work healing. In the distance, lucille can be heard playing several notes for the Spider, with the giant growing healthier by the minute. Vera landed in a tree and began to clean her plumage as she eyed Rose; despite the high pitched, chirpy voice, the pigeon's emerald slits for eyes should've made it clear who was dictating the conversation

      "While he's busy tending to everyone... we found Joe's body in the cabin. Frozen solid when we did, one of us made a memorial of sorts for him. If you want to take the time now to... go say any goodbyes or anything..."

[Projeck]

"Thanks..."

Calvera scratched the side of her head. She hadn't particular paid attention to how strong Lucille was getting... the once innocent and almost helpless blind girl that Calvera met however many days ago, now creating dragons, and binding powerful creatures. This is kind of what Calvera strived to be. Strong and powerful. Not for her own gain, but for the sake of the group. Her near-death situation she was just in hit her momentarily, and for some reason she thought of Arminius. But, as to not linger too long on idle thoughts, she turned to the rest of the group. She laughed lightly and smiled.

"We should get moving. I'd rather not get beat up again today, y'know?"

[Endlessblaze]

Leo does some quick testing with the ice.

...Wow, that's really good, the shards created a sort of lesser ice fire, that was limited by how much mana was used, and the other cooled things just shy of freezing. That would be great for anything needing precision cooling.

 

Spoiler

(20 vs 18) Thaum > Icy Shard: This mana type bursts into a pale blue/white and almost invisible "flame" that consumes the mana to steal heat from anything it touches. The mana is a liquid state and burns like oil.

(12 vs 4) Thaum > Dense Ice: When applied this mana type causes something to rapidly slow and cool, eventually reaching a complete stop(relatively speaking) and just below freezing.

 

"Ok this stuff is pretty handy to me. If you guys don't want it, Im takeing the rest for myself."

 

[Aurorix]

"Hmmm, may as well take something. Might be able to forage something ICE with it, heh heh." Toshiro chuckled to himself taking some of the ice for himself. 

 

Take 2 Ice Shards and 1 Dense Ice

 

"Also, I agree we should head back to town sooner rather than later. Unless you want to be wondering during the night."

[Endlessblaze]

Leo takes the remaining 3 ice shards 2 dense ice

 

"Oh right. You make things to right? Maybe after i get some sleep we can work together on something"
leo yawns and puts his loot in his box. Before dropping onto the sleigh. Snow starts projecting herself. Hovering slightly in the air besides leo.
"Hey rose, can you tell us anything about the corruption?"

Stone heart flows around rose, looking at her

"Corruption. Scary."

[Yours Truly]

Jun quietly thanks the dragon for making her feel marginally less terrible before she walked back to the place where she had quickly stashed her backpack, and examined its contents to make sure that nothing was out of place as she gingerly placed all of the ice shards she found inside. She hoped that the damned things wouldn't melt on her way back to town as she walked back to where the others were standing. "I agree with Toshiro, I honestly don't want to know what monsters lurk in the dark around here.". She then turned to face Toshiro and Leo before she said "But anyway what can the two of you make? And what did you mean by mana testing items anyway Leo?".

[Aurorix]

"Indeed, I've been aching to get my hands back into some metal working." Toshiro responded to Leo with a nod.

 

Then he turned his attention to Jun, "I can sharpen that blade of yours if that's what you're askin'. Not to brag but given enough metal and time I could forage just about anything. Well, anything within reason of course." The fishman stood upright and proud with with a smug smirk plastered on his face. 

[Endlessblaze]

"I can shape pretty much any solid material to my whims, and use golem cores, Basicly magic computers, to make just about anything from equipment, to minions to machines. Cores can manipulate mana, and when mana comes into contact with different substances, the mana has its properties changed. With the right matrials and a core or two, I can make all sorts of things with all sorts of different effects. When I mana test something, Im seeing what happens to mana in contact with a given substance or combination of substances in a given order. That way I get an idea of what i can use it for."

 

"For example, the Ice fire frostbrute produces, comes from wax mana. a piece of wax in his engine takes in thamic mana and produces it. Allowing it to run its engines, while stone heart's shards, are all connected via force mana. which comes from iron. Frostbrute's core is entirely iron, Stone heart's is made from iron and a random rock leo found on the ground, and my core is a combination of gold, iron, diamond, and a soft putty."

 

"Harder cores are more stable and consistent, but less flexible and slower, While softer cores are less stable, but more flexible and faster, there also more creative, which is why in included the putty in snow's core. it was pretty much the softest stuff i dared put in her. Its speed is bottlenecked by the constant checks on everything that comes out of that section, but it does let her have some pretty creative ideas."

 

"Gold is common in golems that need to think creatively and adapt, while iron is common because its a great middle ground between soft and hard cores. Stone is really common for a lot of basic stuff and cannon fodder, because its so easy to find and consistent enough to be easy to manage."

 

.

[Yours Truly]

Jun carefully noted down every single thing the two of them said they could do as her mind raced with possibilities about what the three of them could do with the materials she had in her possession to hopefully prevent her from almost dying horribly again, or at the very least something that could help her take out even more of the incoming army even better. Which is why after a lot of thought she eventually said "No actually I might ask you to help me out with something that is much better Toshiro...although". She moved in close to quietly whisper into the fish man's ear before she said "I would need a bar of that red ore we found earlier....I'll promise to help you get more later of course". She moved back again to address the both of them by slowly taking out her temporal katana from its sheath and quietly saying "But anyway, can any of you potentially reforge this into a rapier once it is alloyed? And," she turns to face Leo before she continued with "Can you use any of your 'mana' to strengthen a blade somehow? And is there any kind of material that you can't test for mana?".

[StormLord]

Frozen Lake(Jun, Toshiro, Lucille, Leo, Calvera):
 

Rose jumped slightly when Vera started speaking for Lucille, she looked at the bird for a moment before putting two and two together.

"No, I um...We should really start making our way back to town.  I've already had plenty of time to come to terms with things."

She looked over to Jun as she asked her about the Corruption.

"No not much, I always tried to stay away from that place because of how dangerous it is." She shook her head and looked around before shrugging, "Whole lot of good it did me though."

 

The road back to the village was fairly quiet tonight, Calvera might recognize the place where her and Arminius fought the slimes and elementals this morning as they got closer to the village.

They would make it back just before dark and with a little time before the Dryad was to arrive.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bottom of the Mine(Kusuke and Satomi):

 

About two hours of work after first seeing the problem and Satomi(with Kusuke's help) had built a "small" and "portable" siege weapon that fired small cannonball-like spheres.

Follow up with a few minutes of peppering the slimes with stone shrapnel and the vast majority had either been dealt with or cut down to a small enough size they where helpless.

 

[Aurorix]

Frozen Lake

"Sure, I'll see what I can do about that. However, I'll need something from you in return though. A favor for a favor yea? We'll talk about specifics when we get back to town though so don't worry about it right now." Toshiro said to Jun before they headed back to town.

 

Town

Once they were safely in town the fish man went up to Jun to discuss about the specifics from earlier,  "Alright, now that we're back in town about that favor I need from you. Nothing major, I just want some leather. That's it. Just make sure it's high quality and you get a decent amount of it. Or is that too much to ask? Ha ha." He chuckled before continuing,  "But seriously, any material I could make a belt out of like leather will do. Plus, while you're looking for that I can get started on reforging that blade of yours. I'll need it of course and I'm sure the blacksmith won't mind me borrowing his forage. Oh, and we'll need to get those ingots as well. Can't forage the blade without some metal, yea."

[Sutoratosu]

Shortly after arriving in Town....

 

Lucille again found herself sitting on the river bank. Just like only that morning. It still hurt to breath. She still felt the occasional tinge of iron at the back of her throat. Her armor battered, tattered, lay scattered around her. Brachus tried his best to sooth what injuries were left with his breath; apparently being slammed into a tree by a massive beast could cause a lot of internal trauma... who would've thought?

     The adrenaline was gone. Most of the anger was gone. All there was was the dull, throbbing pain and occasional spike of the stuff that ran through like a hot needle. Made it harder to focus, but it hadn't stopped her. (She'd endured worse injuries than these and lived to talk about it, granted nothing she'd dealt with before had been quite as huge as the Strider)

 

White, pure light. It bloomed and danced before her in a spectacular display, one that as always, she could never appreciate. Despite the discomfort, despite her lack of focus... for once, it felt like... she didn't need to. What to do, how best to do it, it all just seemed to come to her. Her mind worked faster than it ever had during these rituals before; stripping the qualities of the unnatural ice and picking out exactly the right spots to implant them within the Cat Dragon. It was... almost as if she were in a trance. Not like the one common in her Thaumaturgy though, no... that one was far more lucid, working now though... it was as if she'd given the wheel to some other part of herself- a part that somehow, someway, walked through this as if it'd done it thousands, no... millions of times before. Since the day it was born.

Spoiler

StormLord - Today at 10:56 PM

Int Craft: 23 vs 8,
Quality(reroll): 65,
Blitz: 79,

 

Lucille binds the magical ice into her pet, giving it the ability to belch forth large shards of ice.  Curiously this isn't the only change, Do can now also "sweat" this cryogenic liquid to create an outer layer of protective ice on their body.

 

Ice Breath(active):  A single shard of ice that deals 2d6+[Syn] cold damage to one target and ignores 4 points of Res.

Frost Armor(passive):  Do generates a layer of ice over most of their body granting +3 Res and -1 Dex until they take fire damage or suffer from another heat based effect, may not be equipped in areas with extremely low humidity or extremely high heat.

"phenomenal..." She whispered. Do emerged from the light, wings unfurling, bedazzled in frost and ice that caught the low light and danced in the moons radiance. Every breath he exhaled seemed to chill the very air, conjuring a thin mist that clung to the ground. Even his fur was covered in the stuff, thick enough to form a scaled armor. Examining himself, the beast roared in approval, and from his gullet there was a blast of blue and white, and the a shrill whistle. A spear of ice flew off into the heavens, vanishing from sight.

    "What... what does it all mean?" Lucille sighed. The headache was probably the worse part of it all. No matter hard she attempted to recall the process, walk back through it, it was just... gone now. Had rage been the key? Some intense emotion the stirred something that somehow, she had either never known or simply long since forgotten? Whatever it was, there was some lingering effect- that much, she felt. The bonds.... they felt tighter. Stronger. The speed with which she could give and receive response from them was even faster, all the same with the quality. If she wanted to, by this point she felt as if she could gaze into the very depths of all their souls.

 

And now she was entering trances within trances... 

 

And though the Mavens were silent, she could feel their trepidation.

 

Theirs was a fear so manic and all consuming, it was as if they'd just watched an old foe they thought long since defeated rise from the dead. A foe they knew they'd stand no chance against a second time.

[Yours Truly]

2 hours ago, EXLink32 said:

Frozen Lake

"Sure, I'll see what I can do about that. However, I'll need something from you in return though. A favor for a favor yea? We'll talk about specifics when we get back to town though so don't worry about it right now." Toshiro said to Jun before they headed back to town.

 

Town

Once they were safely in town the fish man went up to Jun to discuss about the specifics from earlier,  "Alright, now that we're back in town about that favor I need from you. Nothing major, I just want some leather. That's it. Just make sure it's high quality and you get a decent amount of it. Or is that too much to ask? Ha ha." He chuckled before continuing,  "But seriously, any material I could make a belt out of like leather will do. Plus, while you're looking for that I can get started on reforging that blade of yours. I'll need it of course and I'm sure the blacksmith won't mind me borrowing his forage. Oh, and we'll need to get those ingots as well. Can't forage the blade without some metal, yea."

Jun nodded in response to Toshiro's request and set out to try and obtain the requested material with a parting "Well then, I'll meet you back at the blacksmith's shop in...let's say ten minutes". It took an unsurprisingly short time as she basically walked inside of the inn, and calmly asked until she found someone who just so happened to have a some leather in stock and ready to purchase for an excessively small amount of money, money that she really had no other use for. She handed the man the pair of copper coins he asked for and took the belt sized piece of leather he was offering before she said her thanks and walked back towards the smithy.

 

When she finally arrived she unceremoniously handed the fish man the lump of flesh leather he had asked for, and the sheathed temporal katana before she gave a curt bow and said "I am sorry but that is all I could find in such a short notice, I'll try to find some more tomorrow". She then walked over to the blacksmith and took the two bars of demonite the man had smelted for her, and she handed one bar over to Toshiro and asked, "But anyway, can you use the metal on my blade and the red and purple ore we found earlier to create several ingots of some alloyed metal that you could use to make a rapier with?".

[Aurorix]

The fishman nods taking both Jun's Demonite Ingot and Temporal Katana.  "I'll start working on creating the metal, it'll probably take the whole night until that's then we can see it's properties in the morning." With that out of the way he went straight to work, taking one of his two Crimtane bars that were prepared by the blacksmith, and the materials Jun had gave him. First he dealt with the most seeming stable metal out of them, the Demonite, then mixed it with the Crimtane. He did not want to deal with the time fucked metal right off the bat, but now that the other two have started to mesh together now's the time to add the blade. He carefully heated the temporal blade, making sure to be extra careful with it. The katana soon became a hilt as the red hot blade oozed into the red and purple metal mixture. Once all the metal had melt he began to let the goops mix together, however, instead of forming one color alloy the metal seemingly kept changing back and forth from red to purple.

 

Crafting Roll

Crafting: 27 vs 16,
Quality: 52,
Blitz I: 28,
Blitz II: 98,

 

Tainted Temporal Alloy ingot(x3):
Three ingots of metal that shift back and forth between a deep purple that seems to reach out and drain away light and a dark scarlet that looks almost glossy, very much like fresh blood.

 

Possible effects of this material are currently unknown, but they radiate dark energies.

 

The alloy he created began sending chills down his spine. This metal was certainly seething with malice and evil but what effects it has are still unknown to him. Maybe once he allowed the metal to cool to ingots he'll be able to figure out more about it. He poured the alloy into ingot casings before leaving them to cool off. He put a note by the casings to warn anyone who came near about the possible dangers of a molten evil alloy. Assuming Jun was still nearby Toshiro walks up to her with a status report with noticable sweat covering covering his body,  "Alright well, the alloy crafting is going well so far. I'm letting the metal cool overnight so we can see what properties it has when the alloy is solid. Your rapier will most likely be done sometime near noon tomorrow if everything goes well from here."

[Powder Miner]

Satomi had shared her plan with Kusuke, and she had received his assent. The Kaiu Engineer had been quite glad to hear that -- she hadn't worked on a siege weapon in far, far too long. It wasn't fitting for someone quite literally raised to work on these things, Satomi had been getting rusty, and to be frank she was itching for a chance to show off her skills in a way that didn't involve her screwing up with half-thought-up plans and nailing everyone with metal shards. So she headed back out of the mine to the village, grabbed the materials she needed (not that many, she wasn't making anything very large) and got to work.

 

The first thing Satomi did was to write in her notebook to get the proper calculations done and to have her plan written out beforehand. Some craftsmen worked on the fly, but when you worked with the scale and intricacy that a siege engineer did, that was hardly a well-advised option. She wanted this to be a portable modular device (and one she'd keep for herself) because she wanted to take it in and out of the mine, and into other worlds, for that matter... a ballista was simple enough. It'd obviously need to be disassemble-able, to make it reasonably portable, and so she would divide it into three pieces: the stand, which would actually be the most complex piece as it would be constructed of wooden rods with rotating joints that would be able to be folded flat and unfolded. Then, the body of the ballista would be another piece, and the largest. Then the rope assemblage would be next, and the ropes could either be tied onto the body to actually use it, or tied around everything to keep it secure. The three pieces would assemble by sliding notches together in certain ways, a material-free but secure solution.

 

With the ballista planned out, Satomi then recruited Kusuke's aid to make it happen, and with his help Satomi got the entire contraption completed within a mere couple of hours, working on a separate piece each time Kusuke sent her back. Carving wood with her wakizashi, wrapping rope, placing in metal pieces, Satomi worked diligently, and everything went rather smoothly! By the time she finished, Satomi found that everything had gone essentially just as planned. She'd created a portable siege weapon, once much lighter than "real" siege weapons but still around thirty pounds... but that weight (and the time needed to set up) would still provide her with unparalleled portability. Then, she had to create its ammo, but this was a simple process, simply taking eight balls of stone and strategically striking them to web them with cracks but not to break them. This structural weakening (she confirmed with a bit of math) would cause pieces of stone to fly everywhere when they impacted from the ballista, and that would be quite useful for dealing with that mob of slimes.

 

Having thanked Kusuke profusely for his assistance, Satomi immediately scurried off to the cave and began to set up the ballista without any further words -- Kusuke would be able to see that she was pretty much manically happy with getting to set this thing up (she was a great fan of technology and siege weapon, after all, and naturally getting to test out her own complex craftsmanship put a glint in her eye), and soon enough she was grinning to herself as she was shooting pieces of stone at the mob of slimes, the obstacle that had blocked Kusuke's path earlier dissolving before the slicing pieces of shrapnel that shredded slime and slaughtered the little gooey monsters. After only a few minutes, they lay dead in a washing-away pile of goo, and Satomi pumped her fist, disassembling her ballista.

 

When she finished, she turned to Kusuke with her grin still on her face and a singsong tone of satisfaction in her voice: she had done her job well, and her ballista worked beautifully well. "Well, that went well if I do say so myself~ It is very, very nice to finally get a chance to make and use a weapon like this with my own hands, now that I'm not scurrying around on Earth Bet or those other places we went. Thank you for your assistance in that matter, Kusuke-san." She stretched and put her disassembled ballista on her back. "Right... now we just have to make our way down? Do you have any tricks to make this easier, Kusuke-san?"

 

Spoiler

Satomi gains the following:

 

Sphere-launcher Ballista Emplacement: A fairly simple and “small” piece of equipment(as far as siege weaponry goes) that can be packed up and moved from location to location for field operations or as transient support. It requires two moves(from the same or different characters) to setup or take down the emplacement, one move is required to load the weapon after setup and each shot, one move is required to fire the weapon, a character who intends to fire the weapon at a quickly moving or distant(50+ yards away) human sized or smaller target must also first spend a move aiming the weapon. This weapon deals 20+[Operator’s Int]+[Ammunition] damage to a single target. Different ammunition may add or alter effects beyond damage. Fills two action slots in the loadout.

 

(8x) Stone Fragmentation ammo: A deceptively simple set of spheres, these pieces of ammunition for Satomi's ballista are simply slightly jagged spheres of stone that have been hammered and struck with relatively light force so that though they remain intact, an impact such as hitting something after being launched will send them violently flying into sharp, momentum-filled stone spikes. She carries them in a sack. Adds 8d4 damage and forces the damage to be divided between four targets when used in an appropriate siege weapon.

 

[kj1225]

Kusuke and Satomi would here someone coming down the mines. Normally that might put them on edge if the sound included a disgruntled Arminius yelling "For fucks sake, you can't eat that!" at someone they couldn't hear but could probably guess was Fingers. After a couple of minutes to get down to their level, Arminius appears with Fingers on his back and a glowing root of some kind in hand. He looks kind of surprised at the two, glancing between them and the ballista before shrugging.

"I uh... didn't know you guys were down here... What's going on?"

[Chevaleresse]

Kusuke made a face on hearing the all-too-familiar sound of Arminius's voice, but smoothed over his expression before the. . . guy. . . arrived. "Exploring," he said somewhat shortly, before turning back to Satomi to respond. "Could do it the old fashioned way and just climb down on a rope. I could also try and practice pulling someone with me when I teleport, which would get us over there faster and without using up any supplies. Do you mind if I give it a shot?"

[kj1225]

Arminius shrugs and after watching the wall behind the two for the tell tale blinking, started heading back up.

[Sutoratosu]

Lucille- River bank

 

The silence of the evening was a pleasant backdrop. She didn't know how long she sat there, just listening to the currents and the chirps of crickets. Might have been a few minutes, might've been an hour or more. She honestly lost herself after a while. 

    There was something beneath the gentle ambiance. Just off the edge of unfocused hearing; grew a bit stronger when she started tuning out the rest. It... it was the noise again. The shifting, almost ethereal frequencies she'd picked up in the castle, and then again when the Strider had attacked. The moment she heard it, the flashes began again... events that once been in color, been in another being's vision, yet somehow had been transmitted to a format she was familiar with; it was not unlike the burst of Sysnesthesia used by the Black Stone, before young Discord had spawned from it. But unlike the stone, the rush of senses the would-be visions caused was not so overwhelming, as to cause nausea. No, if anything, the sensations, and the rough visual equivalents they each represented, felt all too familiar.

      Yet, she knew she did not live through these events. How could she? There were... too many, far too many, too fast to fully process, it had to have comprised hundreds of lifetimes, at the very least. But One in particular stood out, was slow enough to stick- something great and imposing, towering over her, fire and miasma choking the air from her lungs. Talons descending and slicing the air, a great and terrible voice shouting, and finally a pain unlike anything else she'd ever experienced- as if the fury of a million splendid suns had suddenly blossomed in the back of her eyes. So great was it that it made her actively recoil, falling the cool earth and clutching the eyes she had now, useless though they were. So great, she felt the pain not simply in the physical sense, but down to her very spirit, her very soul, as if a peice of herself had been rent from the rest, leaving nothing but a gaping wound in it's wake. 

 

And then, there was no more of the Synesthesia. Only the darkness she was all too familiar with. And voices and tongues she felt as though she knew, but slipped her mind at the moment. The pain lingered for moments, but eventually, it too faded. Until all she could feel was a dull ache the ran deeper than the flesh.

 

She rose slowly. The crickets had stopped. She could sense them all on the edge of her mind, tens of countless critters, each and everyone of them directing their attention at the samething: Her. Even her own beasts gawked. 

 

They expected something. She didn't know what, but... 

 

but she got to her feet. Stripped off the remnants of the silver armor, tossed it into a pile. Opened her mouth, and began to chant. Chant in words no Thaumist had ever known or would know. 

Spoiler

Intended Result: https://pastebin.com/wb8p6vjb

 

Rolls:

Int Craft(rerolled): 20 vs 14,
Quality: 46,

 

Lucille crafts what she intended with the following additions:

HP: 36

Con: 8
Res: 12

 

Mending body(passive): Being such a sturdy and resilient creature the Heros Argenti has the ability to recover from minor wounds faster than most other creatures.
This creature gains 1 HP at the start of its turn, when worn this regeneration is conferred to the wearer.

 

Otherworldly light filled the river bank, visible even from the town. And it continued to shed its radiance upon the land as the sun fully descended over the horizon...

[Projeck]

Upon arriving back to the village, Calvera found herself at the riverside, deciding to practice her... well, control of her powers. She started with some controlled burns, dousing anything with water from the river when it came to that. She looked to the trees, the beauty of nature, and as she heard the songbirds, she smiled. Her thoughts went to Arminius and how she thought he might enjoy the silent noise of the wilderness. Calvera shook her head, and went back to practicing. Once everything was said and done, she gained [2 SYN] for her efforts.

 

With her practicing done, she returned to the comforts of the village, finding herself at the tavern with a glass of water, twiddling her thumbs out of boredom.

[Irbsandcheese]

Alyssa gives an appraising look to the Dye Trader and a smile splashes across her face.
"Ah, thank you! Finally someone else with an eye for beauty." She takes a slight bow to the man and looks to him with a diabolical gleam in her eyes. With a slight flourish, she dances over to the vat of paint and looks in as she brandishes her brush. "Quite a lovely color you have here. Despite being given a method that most would consider cheating, I have never lost my love for the underappreciated art form." She taps her brush a few times, adjusting the color so that it matches that in the pot. Walking towards a wall, she paints a small square of cloth into existence, handing it to the man and grabbing his hand in the process. "I do believe that we are going to be able to help one another out. Alyssa. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

[Powder Miner]

Satomi remained quiet as Kusuke spoke to Arminius, but to be frank her expression was hardly a pleasant one either -- she perhaps put an effort into concealing her disdain for the saboteur man, but it had failed enough for it to be pretty clear she wasn't too happy to see him either. He was a sneak, after all, and smugly proud of his own cowardice at times in a way that was infuriating and a lack of Courage AND Duty. He reminded her of the Scorpion and Crane clans in different measures, to be frank, and that was not a positive comparison to draw.

 

Satomi nodded at Kusuke, when he asked his question, tying the string of the disassembled ballista around the pieces to keep them in a tight bundle which she then tied to her back. After making sure her various other things were secure (and frowning to herself, she'd need a better system than the one she had soon), she nodded again. "Alright, that sounds like a plan to me. If worst comes to worst, I am sure that I can come up with a solution, but I will trust that you know what you're doing here! You've been very helpful so far, after all, both in healing and with my siege weapon, so you've earned some trust in your abilities, I say."

[Chevaleresse]

"Good to hear. Just give me a few moments to practice this, I don't usually bring people along. . ." He put his hand on Satomi's shoulder and focused on his ability for a few moments, skipping just a couple feet forward in space and concentrating on bringing the samurai with him. 

Quote

Trick Level: Kusuke can now use Blink out of combat to transport one other willing and relatively still/calm person along with him.

This practiced and reasonably reliable after a couple of these, he turned his focus to actually crossing the gap. "Right, here we go." He took a deep breath, and then performed a series of blinks aimed at getting him as close as possible to the mysterious signal he'd been feeling.