GLoG

Herein lies the various threads in which our characters live out their lives
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Morty
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Re: GLoG

Post by Morty »

[Main Cabin]

"I understand it's personal, but you were a guest at our campsite when something happened to you. We need to know more, for your safety and that of others," Sophie says, gently. "But let's take it slow. Your name is Kol and you go to the same school as Khannie, yes?"
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Re: GLoG

Post by Ironsmith »

Earl of Purple wrote: Oct 27, 2022 4:53 pm Forest Practice

"I'm not a rabbit, and I can't be a rabbit. But I am a shapeshifter, and most of my shapes aren't that much bigger than that rabbit." Her loxodon shape is unusual in that regard. "If I were coming out here as an otter or a robin, and you caught me by surprise, I could still be dead. And I don't know if I change back if killed, since that's never happened to me. And, because GLoG is safe, I wouldn't necessarily be looking out for hostile people instead of just predatory animals." And just because Natalie doesn't turn into a rabbit doesn't mean there's nobody here that can't, who could go missing for unknown reasons. If Sophie knows, she can either warn Arthfael about other shifters or warn any potential rabbits to be careful. "I want to forget I saw this as much as you do, I assure you, but I'm not sure I can afford to."
[Forest Practice]

"...Oh." Arthfael's gaze falls. Clearly, he hadn't thought of that. "I, um... I wasn't aware there were any shapeshifters here. I'll, um... have to not make a point of eating any. I mean, I don't eat anything out here other than hares, but... I guess if a shifter didn't know that, then..."

That could go very badly.

"...Okay, okay, fine. I, um... I don't know how much you know about strig- [screw] it, vampires, but... we kind of have a thing where we're compelled to feed on blood. My uncle and my sisters can keep a lid on it pretty well, blood moons aside. And it's... a bit embarrassing that I can't. If I don't come out here to hunt every few weeks, I get a bit..." He hisses awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck. "...Stir-crazy, I guess."
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Re: GLoG

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Morty wrote: Oct 27, 2022 10:30 pm [Main Cabin]

"I understand it's personal, but you were a guest at our campsite when something happened to you. We need to know more, for your safety and that of others," Sophie says, gently. "But let's take it slow. Your name is Kol and you go to the same school as Khannie, yes?"
Main Cabin

Kol nods.
"Yeah, that's right. We met on the first day. Then I got a disease that made me a dragon and Khannie and I mostly started talking after that. She's roommates with our friend Mary."
It's amazing how the front and end of that sounds normal and then that middle is just there, huh?
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Re: GLoG

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Cabin Confrontation
"That... That, uh, actually might work. I could make a simple construct to carry a letter and send it to roughly the right place. Uh, but what words to use, I... She's interrupted by the question about the baby. Her face lights up. "Yes! This is Aethelred. Say hi to the nice lady, Aethelred!" "Gogga!" The child, aroused by the commotion, makes a happy noise and reaches up for his mother's face. "Uh, normally we can't, but he's my little miracle. Yes he is! Coochiecoochiecoo!" Sekhmet wiggles her fingers in front of her son's face, and he grabs at one with his chubby little hand. "He's five months old."
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Re: GLoG

Post by Reinholdt »

[Daddy at Daycare]

"Well you wouldn't have to act if you didn't want to and could just stick to mostly direct- aahhhh!" Reinholdt is startled! It would probably hurt a lot more if he didn't wear the leather pants all the time. He imagines people laugh at him for wearing the zombie bite protection, but the legs are the ones the silent crawlers always go after!

It just coincidentally also protects him from the overly aggressive tendencies of his own daughter. "Found her," Rein says with a half sigh, half smile. He reaches down to try and take hold of the scruff of her neck and lift her off his leg, but she may have embedded herself too deeply. In which case, he'll have no choice but to just pet her on the head a few times to encourage her to let go. Nothing can pry a cat loose once their claws are hooked. Sometimes not even the cat.
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Re: GLoG

Post by Thursday Violist »

[Daddy at Daycare]

With the startled sound, Harley turns! She sees that it's not, in fact, a zombie, but is instead a little cat. Well, daughter pouncing is better than missing daughter.
She walks towards them. "I see you did find her."


Manja is grabbed, coincidentally at her only weak point. Curses! By chance, her one weakness is stricken!
Sadly, she can't quite figure out how to pull the claws out at the moment. After getting pulled at and seeing her claws are still stuck, she gives a helpless mew and looks up at him.
Fortunately, having her head rubbed jump-starts her thinking. Wait, yes! She can do this! She's not stuck!
If her claws are stuck, all she has to do is make her claws go away.

And, after a few tries, she succeeds. Claws gone! Not stuck anymore.
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Re: GLoG

Post by Morty »

[Main Cabin]

"A disease that made you a dragon. I see." Perhaps oddly, Sophie doesn't seem at all surprised or perturbed. She just accepts it as part of his story. "And did the man you met here turn you back into a human? I believe you said he knew things about your family."
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Re: GLoG

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Main Cabin

Kol nods.
"He told me that I was always a dragon. Whatever I caught just broke my disguise. Then he put it back on me. But you guys scared him off before he could tell me how it works." He sounds slightly annoyed about that, but from what Khannie said it probably wasn't a great idea to stick around him anyway.
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Re: GLoG

Post by Earl of Purple »

Forest Practice

"If you keep to hares, I should be safe. But there might be other shapeshifters here too. I can't turn into a hare." Natalie's never been transformed into a hare, so it's not a shape in her repertoire. Not yet, at least.

"The vampires from my homeworld would be on fire right now, and most don't drink blood- they drink souls." They are consequently very rare since nobody likes letting them get anywhere near communities- with a few odd exceptions. "I... might be able to help. My magic allows me to pull a reflection of an animal through the leylines to me. I only summon living creatures, like the baby kraken here." The main issue is it's a 'reflection' rather than an actual animal, but... if Arthfael's ever encountered a kraken before, this one smells, sounds, and looks right. A reflection is a copy, but a near-perfect one. It should register as alive if Arthfael has any way of sensing that, though it's up to Ironsmith if it's real enough to count.
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Re: GLoG

Post by Morty »

[Main Cabin]

"I've never actually met him before." Sophie shakes her head. "I don't know why he was so scared of me. How did he know about your origins and nature?"
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Re: GLoG

Post by Keeper »

Main Cabin

"He said he was a follower of my mom's, and that he was there on the day I was born."
The latter of which is pretty suspicious. How many random followers are just around when a goddess has a bastard child? It narrows down the relationship a bit, but to what Kol doesn't know.
"Have you heard of Adea?"
She is allegedly also the goddess Braon follows but this narrator hasn't been reading all of her scenes and so does not know if it's come up.
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Re: GLoG

Post by Morty »

[Main Cabin]

Hmm. Adea. Braon has called her name from time to time, when angry or otherwise emotional. And she told Sophie she follows a goddess that city-folk look down on... that must be her.

"I have. Not in much detail. Someone I've met has mentioned her."

And Kol is Adea's son? Gods having demigod children aren't exactly unheard of, though that would probably be the first one she's met.
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Re: GLoG

Post by Keeper »

Main Cabin

”He said I was her bastard kid with some guy. Before she died. And that makes me a dragon. Or a Th….something. I guess her kids are dragons?”
He shakes his head.
”But maybe he lied. That would probably be good. I don’t think I want that Absum guy…god…person mad I exist.”
Having a god mad you exist is not on most people’s list of priorities.
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Re: GLoG

Post by Ironsmith »

Earl of Purple wrote: Oct 29, 2022 3:46 pm Forest Practice

"If you keep to hares, I should be safe. But there might be other shapeshifters here too. I can't turn into a hare." Natalie's never been transformed into a hare, so it's not a shape in her repertoire. Not yet, at least.

"The vampires from my homeworld would be on fire right now, and most don't drink blood- they drink souls." They are consequently very rare since nobody likes letting them get anywhere near communities- with a few odd exceptions. "I... might be able to help. My magic allows me to pull a reflection of an animal through the leylines to me. I only summon living creatures, like the baby kraken here." The main issue is it's a 'reflection' rather than an actual animal, but... if Arthfael's ever encountered a kraken before, this one smells, sounds, and looks right. A reflection is a copy, but a near-perfect one. It should register as alive if Arthfael has any way of sensing that, though it's up to Ironsmith if it's real enough to count.
[Forest Practice]

Arthfael frowns. "Wait, wait... so you do summoning magic, too?" He asks, fingering the short stack of cards in his back pocket, looking back at the baby kraken. He supposes he should have guessed; there's not many other explanations for the creature's sudden appearance. But the news still hits him surprisingly hard. "...I don't think that'll work. I tried making my own hares, but they're not... satisfying, I guess you could say. Sort of like eating a single raisin and calling it lunch."
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Re: GLoG

Post by Earl of Purple »

Forest Practice

"Yep, a conjurer. Specifically, I push and pull things around through leylines. Not yet managed to move my rucksack without emptying it, though. Which is less than ideal, I want to be able to fly to Inside and then summon my rucksack and have all my stuff. It's too big for a robin to carry." Natalie might be able to summon something that can fly to carry her rucksack for her; some of the things she can conjure are quite large, such as the baby kraken. But different animals fly at different speeds, and Natalie doesn't know why she's got the limits she does. I do.

Speaking of the baby kraken, if Arthfael doesn't want it Natalie waves a hand and more flashing card symbols appear around the sea monster and it disappears.
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Re: GLoG

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[Main Cabin]

"Hmm." An illegitimate child of a goddess. Yes, Sophie can't blame Kol for hoping it's not true. "Did you know anything about her before this man explain things to you?"
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Re: GLoG

Post by Ironsmith »

Earl of Purple wrote: Oct 30, 2022 4:05 pm Forest Practice

"Yep, a conjurer. Specifically, I push and pull things around through leylines. Not yet managed to move my rucksack without emptying it, though. Which is less than ideal, I want to be able to fly to Inside and then summon my rucksack and have all my stuff. It's too big for a robin to carry." Natalie might be able to summon something that can fly to carry her rucksack for her; some of the things she can conjure are quite large, such as the baby kraken. But different animals fly at different speeds, and Natalie doesn't know why she's got the limits she does. I do.

Speaking of the baby kraken, if Arthfael doesn't want it Natalie waves a hand and more flashing card symbols appear around the sea monster and it disappears.
[Forest Practice]

Arthfael stares at her for a few moments, before whooshing his arm over his head. "I'm going to need some context for that." He says bluntly. "But... from what I can tell, you're saying you could send rabbits my way without hurting anyone? I mean, not that you would, but theoretically you could?"

Gotta get to the heart of the matter.
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Re: GLoG

Post by Earl of Purple »

Forest Practice

"Actual teleportation of living creatures is incredibly risky, for a number of reasons. There's a chance the teleportee disappears at departure and doesn't reappear at destination. Longer the distance, more likely that is. Also, an animal teleported in this way has no unnatural loyalty to me, and will behave as an animal that has just been forcibly teleported to a strange place. Plus I'd need to know exactly where that animal is, which is very tricky when not teleporting yourself or someone you can see. What I do instead is pull a reflection through. Instead of the actual creature, I get a representation of the creature I'm summoning, and as I'm not looking for a specific entity I get one that is the closest along that leyline network. And it's altered slightly so it'll listen to me. It's real in most respects, if killed it'll even leave a corpse." Until the leyline network Natalie drew upon to manifest it dissipates enough and it stops existing, at least.
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Re: GLoG

Post by Ironsmith »

[Forest Practice]

"...I'm going to take all of that to mean 'no'." Arthfael snarks. "I'm not sure what you mean by reflections, or leylines, or at what point teleporting entered the conversation, but I don't think I can eat any of those. Not in a productive sense, at any rate." He crosses his arms and frowns. "...So I'll just, um... be going back to square one, then."

Darn. He should have known better than to get his hopes up.
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Re: GLoG

Post by Reinholdt »

Thursday Violist wrote: Oct 28, 2022 7:48 pm [Daddy at Daycare]

With the startled sound, Harley turns! She sees that it's not, in fact, a zombie, but is instead a little cat. Well, daughter pouncing is better than missing daughter.
She walks towards them. "I see you did find her."


Manja is grabbed, coincidentally at her only weak point. Curses! By chance, her one weakness is stricken!
Sadly, she can't quite figure out how to pull the claws out at the moment. After getting pulled at and seeing her claws are still stuck, she gives a helpless mew and looks up at him.
Fortunately, having her head rubbed jump-starts her thinking. Wait, yes! She can do this! She's not stuck!
If her claws are stuck, all she has to do is make her claws go away.

And, after a few tries, she succeeds. Claws gone! Not stuck anymore.
[Daddy at Daycare]

The moment her claws go away and she stops being stuck, Reinholdt scoops up the little kitten in his hands, holding her with one and petting with the other.

"Well hello there. Are you being bad?" Reinholdt asks her with a warm smile on his face, as if being bad was the best. Truthfully, it was just being Manja that was the best.

"What are you doing hanging out by the door? Don't you have friends you want to play with?" Maybe asking her now was questionable, but if Rein can talk in cat form, maybe Manja could as well. Still, she's always been rather quiet for a two year old. Must be the sneaky genes. Can't sneak about if you're babbling.
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Re: GLoG

Post by Earl of Purple »

Forest Practice

"If I wasn't teleporting the rabbit, how did you think I was sending it to you? How do you summon something if you don't teleport it or pull a reflection along the leylines?" Natalie tilts her head, and sits on the stump. She's a little curious about how Arthfael's magic works, since they seem to use the same words to mean very different things.
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Re: GLoG

Post by Ironsmith »

[Forest Practice]

"...Um... well, for one, I didn't really think of it as sending." Arthfael begins, pulling a card from his pocket and giving it a quick glance. "The way it works for me is that they're already here, on my person, and just need a little push to come out into the world and do things. Theoretically, anybody with any magical ability at all could use them, but I made them and they usually only answer to me." He clears his throat and holds up the card. "Soul's Echo: Azure Phoenix!"

The card bursts into flame, in a surprisingly bombastic fashion, burning much hotter, brighter, and with a larger flame than would be possible if someone had simply lit it on fire. The flames only seem to grow, as well, rolling into a vaguely ovular shape, before hardening into an ash-colored egg that lands at Arthfael's feet.

"...Sort of like that." He says, looking down at the egg with a worried frown. Huh. He's never actually activated this card before, he wasn't really expecting that.
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Re: GLoG

Post by Keeper »

Morty wrote: Oct 30, 2022 11:59 pm [Main Cabin]

"Hmm." An illegitimate child of a goddess. Yes, Sophie can't blame Kol for hoping it's not true. "Did you know anything about her before this man explain things to you?"
Main Cabin

Kol shakes his head.
"No, I'd never even heard of her before today. It just kind of got dropped in my lap all at once."
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Re: GLoG

Post by Earl of Purple »

Forest Practice

"I do magic, but I don't have magical ability, I don't think. All the power I use I gather from the leylines mapped across the world and through the air and in the between-spaces. They aren't like most people think, they aren't like the lines of longitude and latitude on a globe, they're just... everywhere, and go everywhere, not always by crossing the space between one place and another. It's by reaching into and through leylines that I teleport objects and summon creatures, though only reflections of a creature rather than teleporting it." Natalie's actually rather impressed by the phoenix egg; she's primarily limited to Blue, and phoenixes are mostly Red. "Do you need to do something to make it hatch?"
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Re: GLoG

Post by Ironsmith »

[Forest Practice]

"I don't think-"

POOM!

The phoenix's eggshell shatters, throwing harmless flecks of soot in all directions as a bird made of blue fire rises out of the remains of the egg, stretching its wings and letting out a majestic screech.

Then, it turns to face Natalie.

"You have asked, and I will answer." The phoenix begins, in a soothing feminine voice. "When I am summoned, I will meet one request, to be spoken before my egg. I would carry a message, lend my knowledge to answer one question, and if I can not answer immediately, I would seek out the answer and return with it in hand. If needs be, I would even fight, to the best of my abilities, within whatever parameters are given to me. Until a request is made, I will not hatch, and when it is completed, I must be on my way." The bird gives Natalie a little nod. "I hope you find this answer satisfactory. Do call again."

And with that, the flames promptly extinguish themselves, leaving Arthfael standing there with his jaw dropped. "...I... I don't know what I was expecting, but I don't think that was it."
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Re: GLoG

Post by Earl of Purple »

Forest Practice

"That's a very useful minion. This one's mostly useful as a roadblock, if I get in trouble. It's tough, but slow and not very dangerous." The baby kraken burbles and waves its tentacles in the air. "A lot of my stuff's like that, really. Mostly it's birds and faeries and quite small things. There's a screaming homunculus that's proved quite useful." Mostly as a distraction, considering it screams.
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Re: GLoG

Post by Ironsmith »

[Forest Practice]

"...Yeah. Minion." Arthfael rubs at his neck nervously. "...Well, um, with that, I guess I should be on my way. And, um... promise you won't tell Sophie about what you saw here? I don't think she knows about... any of this, and I'd rather keep it that way."
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Re: GLoG

Post by Earl of Purple »

Forest Practice

"If it's not a minion, what is it?" Natalie waves a hand and the kraken hatchling disappears, more card suite symbols appearing in the air around both her hand and the kraken.

"Yeah, OK." Natalie's not very happy with it, but she'll do it. "I think you should, though. She'll understand, I think." Or if not, try very hard to not make it awkward... and Exalted always achieve what they try hard at.
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Re: GLoG

Post by Ironsmith »

[Forest Practice]

"All evidence to the contrary." Arthfael mumbles as he leaves. He's not going to answer Natalie's question; the last thing she wants is to get drawn back into a lengthy conversation. Besides, she gets the point, right? He doesn't think of them as minions. However else he thinks of them, minions isn't the right term. Maybe he finds it reductive. Maybe it just doesn't describe their relationship accurately. Who knows? Natalie certainly won't.
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Here's to us!
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Re: GLoG

Post by Morty »

[Main Cabin]

"What about the people who raised you?" Sophie asks. A personal question, definitely, but an important one to understand the situation. "Can you tell me about them?"
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