Siobhan's fantasy epic of eipc fantasy (open, PM me first)

[siobhancan99]

Kasia screws up her mouth a moment, inhales, then exhales "you said some really fucking crazy shit to me Clancy, and I'm trying to decide whether it was the fever, which should not have addled you that much that fast, or if you believe you mean it." she turns and leans against he wall, looking over at him "so yeah, something's up."

 

[siobhancan99]

Kasia shakes her head "no Clancy, you told me you loved me. And now I am in this place where I have to figure out what that means. Either it doesn't mean anything to you when you say it, which is true for some people, and that's one thing... or think you mean it, but you can't mean it. You can't mean it because love requires knowledge, and you don't fucking know me. You don't know us. We have good chemistry and I am starting to rely on you and those are the building blocks for what eventually becomes love, but they aren't love. So maybe you don't understand what love is? Or maybe you're just so enamored with the idea of being in love that you decide you're in love.... and the problem there is that that kind of love isn't really about the object of the love, or the pair of people. It's about the declarant wanting love so badly it doesn't really matter who is around. They're going to be in love.We've spent what, 5 days? a week together? And I like you a lot Clancy, and I see a lot of potential in you...but that's not what you said to me. You didn't say... I think you're pretty great Kasia. You didn't say .... this seems to be going well." She shifts "all of which are or at least were undeniably true. you said you love me, which is not possible at this juncture. we haven't had petty fights, and I haven't gotten you in trouble. We haven't done any of the bad shit. We've just had fun sexy times." She looks down the street, then back to him "So fuck, Clancy. I don't know what to do because I can't unhear it and right now I don't know how to handle the fact that none of the reasons for it are great."

 

[siobhancan99]

When Clancy arrived at the crypt the next morning, he found Andrej chatting affably with a man in a breastplate, with a shield embossed with two halves of women's faces joined as one. This was the Homines/Gradzlatan representation of the sisters or twins, as they were often known. Here worshipped as one goddess with two faces. The man wore a tabard with the emblem of the order of gentle repose, a somewhat inaccurately named militant wing of the church whose dictate was the destruction of undead wherever they might be found. They were possessed of godly magics, geared towards rooting out that which they believed to be the ultimate sin, the reanimated corpse.

When Clancy approaches, Andrej shifts his blade in its scabbard "well, shall we get started then? just the three of us this morning."

 

[siobhancan99]

Andrej shakes his head "no" then steps to unlock the chain on the crypt. The man nods "I'm Mikkel" the man had a Gradzlatan accent, and talked with Andrej in the local tongue rather than Homines. Andrej drew his blade, which erupted with an icy light, and Lars cast a spell, his shield blazing with the light of the sun. the three of them head down into the depths, moving through the tight passage. As the pair had seen the day before, the passage veered away down to the right and then back towards town on a steep downward angle. the light of the blade and shield making the passage ahead well lit. movement can be seen at the edge of the light, as they descend the passage extends perhaps a half mile, definitely under the city.

The tunnel opens up into a large cavern, perhaps 20 or 25 feet high, with a shaft of light coming down at the base of the shaft of light was a mound of corpses. "ah" Mikkel moves slowly closer "an illegal dumping ground. be careful, the dead will be unquiet here. The pile itself creates them, but also draws them from other locations"

 

[siobhancan99]

Mikkel hmmms "we need to kill anything in there, and then summon Jadzia from the temple below. She can sanctify the grounds. We also need to get up there and see who is dumping bodies there. Some neighborhoods dump their dead homeless in pits like this, rather than paying the priests of the goddess of death to perform the necessary rights. This is the result"

Kasia had mentioned going to get Andrej, and that's why he was there. perhaps he brought the paladin.

 

[siobhancan99]

Mikkel clarifies "jadzia is the priestess who runs the temple of death here in the catacombs. The temples above are lay priests who perform the necessary rites to keep the dead from rising. Jadzia coordinates the attacks on the undead that infest the catacombs. We go in, kill anything that moves, and then we go get Jadzia to do the purifications. then we climb up through the hole to see where it is... if we can. can you fly? also do you have any area control spells in case we get mobbed?"

 

[siobhancan99]

The paladin nods "your job, is to use those if we are getting mobbed. Andrej and I will bear the brunt of any attack. you stay back, shoot at flankers. Keep them in front of us while we do the heavy lifting. There may only be a few, but a collection of unsanctified bodies like that will produce its own dark energy. So its likely to be more" the pair start down into the cavern, and immediately the smell of fresh flesh awakens a number of ghouls. they extricate themselves from the pile of dead, and start lumbering towards the pair. Andrej looks back at Clancy, uncertain a moment. He steels himself though and braces for the impact of the first wave, fending with his shield and slicing off limbs with his enchanted blade.

The paladin uses a mace, preferring to crush the heads of the ghouls, which seems reasonably effective. Within a matter of seconds, a few are laying around the pair, and Clancy can spot more in the shadows. They seem wary, but the temptation of living flesh is strong...

 

[siobhancan99]

Clancys spell is indeed much more effective given a little time to act. he can see hte thing still shambling forward, but the acid eats away at the connective tissues and it starts to fall apart, disintegrating before it reaches the party. Andrej and Mikkel fight in tandem, their weapons rising and falling, crashing against what seems like an inexorable tide of the undead. Claws scrabble at shields, the sound of a mace crunching a skull echoes through the chamber. Andrej's enchanted blade hacks off limbs and leaves rime encrusted flesh in its wake.

Grim work that seems to stretch on for hours, the trio slaughter ghoul after ghoul, till finally more a score of the beasts lays dead, clancy's spells are gone and the two warriors breath hard and try to rub life back into aching arms. "are you hit?" Mikkel asks andrej, who nods. The paladin lays his hands on Andrej and prays "that should keep you from infection" He turns to Clancy "what about you, wizard?"

 

[siobhancan99]

Mikkel nods "the temple is not far. Andrej will take you. I will stay here in case any new dead awaken, though Jadzia is more than capable of handling a few on her own. Tell her that the cavern is ready for a cleanse." he pauses "you mentioned before you can fly. any chance you can get up through that hole and see where it leads? we need to know who has been dumping here"

 

[siobhancan99]

Mikkel clears his throat "i told you once, already, that Jadzia is the priestess who handles the temple below. I know that was 20 ghouls ago but gods above man..." he shakes his head and Andrej whispers "he's had a rough few days. lay off him." then Andrej looks over to Clancy "i'll go get the priestess, Jadzia, who nobody prays to because she's a priestess. you see what's up that hole."

 

[siobhancan99]

Clancy appears at the top of a well, which is odd since everyone knows the ground water in Gradzlata is non-existent. The well is clearly a decoy. Mikkel shouts up "go figure out where you are, get the cross streets so we can figure out who is doing this" The paladin then kneels and prays, sitting in the shaft of light from the well, he almost looks angelic.

 

[siobhancan99]

Mikkel calls up "stay up there until Jadzia returns, and then we will meet you at the entrance to the crypt. That way if you see something sneaking up on me you can warn me"

About a half hour later, Clancy was walking with Andrej and Mikkel to show them the neighborhood "often" Mikkel explained "Basically, an area with homeless deaths or too poor to afford funerary services will often have a man who does something like this... often with bad result." He hmmms "this is a reasonably good neighborhood though, so i'm going to assume that these are probably debtors for a loan shark or some other group of people involved in illegal activity. We should have the watch watch the well, they might pick up some ne'er do wells"

 

[siobhancan99]

Andrej shrugs "i doubt it. those ghouls were in your path, and you'd have encountered them sooner or later. Kasia convinced my father while you were sick to send me, as it was the family crypt they were getting into. I brought Mikkel along for the support, neither of us are getting paid anything to be here." He shrugs again "And Kas obviously wasn't here so i doubt she gets paid at all."

 

[siobhancan99]

Andrej laughs "you'd be surprised how much easier it is with a magic fucking sword. This thing is no joke." he pats the blade "my poor legal but not actual ancestor really did me a favor insisting on being buried with this" He nods "Should serve us well down in Sewochan... assuming Kasia is still coming. My father offered her a place down there last night. She said she had to think about it. She had reasons to stay here."

 

[JonathanBair]

While hanging in the tavern, Jon makes his mind up to head out to a new town. Jon pays his debt and makes his way to the city main gates.

 

[siobhancan99]

Reply to Clancy

Andrej shakes his head "no. She is at her place. If she goes she has to make arrangements for all her shit. She dropped a thousand on my dad the other night, then they had a really long talk. like for hours. At the end of it he said he'd hire me to go with her to Sewochan to oversee her investigation into the corruption in his grain business there. He said she wasn't sure she was going to take the job, and honestly I think that he's just trying to give her something to do. At any rate, she's at her place. Or at least not at ours."

 

[siobhancan99]

The door opens and a bleary eyed and slightly disheveled, obviously inebriated Kasia opens the door. She looks at him for a moment and turns and heads back into the small apartment, leaving the door open for him to follow. She sits, curling a leg up so she can rest her chin on her knee, and sips from a cracked mug with wine in it. "hey."

 

[siobhancan99]

Kasia sips at her wine and keeps her eyes on Clancy "I am thinking about it. It's a lot of money" She sips at her wine again, then sets the mug down and wraps her arms around her leg "I don't really want to go Clancy but I don't know what to do. i really like you, and that should be enough after ... 5 days. that should be all after 5 days. i like you and I was getting used to having you around and was thinking maybe it could work out but if it is gonna work out there has to be a lot of self honesty, and a lot of seeing each other for what we really are. you know?"

 

[siobhancan99]

Kasia closes her eyes and leans back against the wall "Clancy love is valuable because its rare and its hard. Love doesn't happen overnight which is why we all want it and why we're all missing it. Love is about still wanting to be with someone when they've done something awful. Love is about still wanting to kiss me after i've puked up all my wine. it's not a sonnet, its a companionable silence. Love is about being secure in what you have and each other, because you've been tested and you've weathered the storm. Love is about what happens after the hard times, not about what you feel during the good times" She arches and stretches a little "it's easy to feel that rush, when times are good. when you're fucking all the time and you have new stuff to talk about. When you still are meeting each other's friends and everything has that fresh spring feel to it. Of course everybody likes that. That's the easy part. Love comes after the easy part is done, and you can know for real and for sure that despite the easy good times when everyone's on their best behavior being over that you still want what you've got. Love isn't about the best times, even though it grows from them. It's about the every day. its about the bad days."

 

[siobhancan99]

Kasia rubs her face and stares blankly for a moment "I don't want to go to Sewochan. Jozep and I had a long talk, because he noticed I was upset when I talked to Andrej. We talked a lot about life and love and he ... got it. and he said that if I wanted he would find something for me to do out of town for a while, and if I decided that I didn't want to that it was ok" she stares down into her wine "I wanna give this a shot Clancy and I have to trust you, but what I need to trust is that you're gonna rein yourself in a bit not in what you say to me but what you say to yourself. you know what i mean?"

 

[siobhancan99]

Kasia rubs her temples "deal" she yawns "i wanna get some sleep, you can stay but i'm gonna pass the fuck out" she climbs into bed and almost immediately starts to snore.


In the morning she's up, nursing her hangover when Clancy wakes. "lets get some food then we can get someone to sew up your jacket or something" though Clancy had a few thousand gold on his books, and could afford fancy coats if he wanted.

 

[siobhancan99]

Kasia drags Clancy into a tavern for some fried potatoes in lard, onions, heavy spicing and runny eggs on top. she eats the greasy meal, washing it down with plenty of water. Her eyes look up at him, the green sort of dull and the whites practically scarlet. She rubs her head "marius has some kinda.... armor... thing.... in his coat. Maybe you could ask about that instead of the null space? all the mobility of cloth, all the protection of chain? as for something to defend yourself after your magic runs out... have you ever fought with a blade at all?"

 

[siobhancan99]

Kasia hmmms "well, knives I can teach you how to fight with. Staff is pretty classic for a wizard too. Plus i think its pretty easy to train with. we could probably find someone to really get you good with it."

 

[siobhancan99]

Kasia shrugs "knives are probably best. You can carry them easily, they won't weigh you down/ We can work on your knife skills here and there." She sits back, looking a little ill from her greasy breakfast, but also in better spirits. "let's go talk to someone about getting you that coat. We can go up to the rise over the embassy to that place where they think you are just the cutting edge of human fashion" she rolls her eyes "and you can talk about an armored coat."

 

[siobhancan99]

Laptop dead