Segev Stormlord
GM, 781 posts
Thu 7 Jul 2016
at 03:29 | Forging A Clean StartEvangelical Design frowned, not for the first time, at having to work with the bear of a blacksmith. He hadn't mentioned them, but the way his glares focused on the silver tattoos indicated he clearly knew what they meant. Still, he had proven a competent ally in discerning the cause of the poison in the water supplies. And so the two worked together, as their goals aligned.
"It's clear," he said quietly, just for Alistr's ears as the larger man carefully finished the last of the screening frames. The water should be purified. Evangelical Design assured that the fates of the water's least gods were protected. "The stones, they're the flesh of a demon. I've read about him before. The Blood of the Forge. We should expect him soon, once he realizes his work is undone."
He grimaced as he brushed the Fate of illness on the stone into an ephemeral tag. "Going to have to be careful not to gather too many of these. Spreading them around to get rid of them is almost worse than catching the thing."
Around them, the camp was still in frenetic activity. The water may be purified, but if there was a way to help those already far gone, it would take a lot to do it.
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Alistr Hamrsoung
player, 104 posts
Full Time No Moon Lunar
Part time Smith
Thu 7 Jul 2016
at 04:08 | Forging A Clean StartAlistr mere grunts as the last of the frames is done. If he noticed Design staring he didn't respond to it. More than a few stared when he worked. The reason didn't matter much as to the why they stared.
"Flesh of a demon you say. Short of burning it do we have a way to get rid of it? Spreading it around would just make things worse." he ponders a moment. "As for expecting it. I should think he would try something by now. I have no fear of what he might do." the bravado seems genuine or at least not much of an act.
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Segev Stormlord
GM, 782 posts
Thu 7 Jul 2016
at 04:57 | Forging A Clean Start"We'll need to work out a cleansing ritual. This thing won't burn. An unholy fire is its blood. The stone flakes... will have to be contained, somehow."
"The coals of the fire burn hottest, but are not consumed. Hah! Why contain it! Fire yearns to spread!" A new voice echoed, rasping like a distant inferno's hiss. "Embrace it. You are a smith! A master of the forge! Join me, claim its creative fire for your own!"
Stepping between the most fever-driven of the men was a spindly, four-armed manikin of stone, with a pointy, triangular head ending in horns on top and a delicately carved beard on the bottom. Cracks in its stone flesh create a pebbled texture, and two of its arms pick and peel at it, pulling of flakes and dropping them as it moves. Green fire drips like blood from the wounds before the molten stone beneath cools and hardens to a new scab.
This message was lightly edited by the GM at 16:31, Sun 21 Aug 2016.
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Alistr Hamrsoung
player, 105 posts
Full Time No Moon Lunar
Part time Smith
Thu 7 Jul 2016
at 16:16 | Forging A Clean Start"The demon I take it." jerking a thumb in it's general direction. "I might have use for a small portion for a magical reagent. Stress the might. However smiths create not destroy. My purpose is to make tools to either protect people or to male their lives easier. The monter that calls itself the Realm may have branded me a demon, but if I ally with the likes of you it will be truth. Now you have a choice leave and take your skin with or be banished back to whence you came."
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Segev Stormlord
GM, 783 posts
Thu 7 Jul 2016
at 18:28 | Forging A Clean StartThe demon hisses and laughs with a sound like a forge burning out of control, and Evangelical Design draws an elegant daiklaive with relatively little silvery metal compared to its size. "The Blood of the Forge will not be extinguished by so paltry a threat! You cannot stop the spread of ideas, any more than you can a wildfire!" declares the creature as it hurls stone flakes like shuriken. Evangelical Design is cut in several places as the handsome Exalt charges!
((5, 5, and 2 successes on a set of Thrown rolls to hit Alistr.))
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Alistr Hamrsoung
player, 106 posts
Full Time No Moon Lunar
Part time Smith
Thu 7 Jul 2016
at 18:37 | Forging A Clean StartAlistr smiles as bony plates grow under his skin. Activating Armor-Forming Method. As well as first strength excellency for the next thing that he does. As he charges he throws his goremaul at Blood of the Forge.
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Segev Stormlord
GM, 784 posts
Sat 16 Jul 2016
at 07:12 | Forging A Clean StartThe demon's slender limbs are surprisingly solid where they cross beneath Alistr's hammer. With a sickening grinding, they slide it aside, scattering stony flakes and burning green blood hither and thither. The creature's claws scratch with seeming futility at Alistr's armored flesh, in turn, though their heat leaves a dry, sunburn-like tenderness just below where they passed.
Taking advantage of the damage done by the Lunar's blows and the demon's focus on the smith, Evangelical Design brings his strangely ephemeral blade around to sever one of the limbs, leaving the tag that was taken from the infection he removed earlier behind. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the suspected source of that supernatural contagion is unphased by exposure to its own curse.
Though the demon makes no progress in threatening the Exalteds' well-being, Alistr's notices that its discarded flesh is beginning to...sprout. Tiny scarecrow arms of fracked and semi-molten stone are beginning to writhe out of the ground seeded by the Blood of the Forge, and the soldiers who are coherent enough to try to join the fight are losing their footing and being pinned by them to the poisoned ground.
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Alistr Hamrsoung
player, 107 posts
Full Time No Moon Lunar
Part time Smith
Sat 30 Jul 2016
at 17:14 | Forging A Clean Start Alistr sees the flecks sprouting and thinks to himself"Well that isn't good. Interesting way to propogate might be useful information later." Alistr grins at the demon "I see now that killing you will be difficult demon, but I will do it. Then I will kill your demonlings. Fact is you lose. So save yourself and me the pain and go back to Malfeas." He takes a guard position seeing that attack is only making things worse at the moment.
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Segev Stormlord
GM, 786 posts
Tue 16 Aug 2016
at 17:23 | Forging A Clean Start"As a craftsman, you must know the importance of materials," says the demon as he advances, step by step. "All the best ones are HERE!"
Some of the soldiers - the sicker looking ones - start trying new tactics, and they actually seem to be working. Pulling themselves out of the limbs or using the limbs to hold them, their struggles guiding their motion. One starts choking, however, as a severed stone arm crawls down his throat. His eyes bulge in horror.
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Alistr Hamrsoung
player, 108 posts
Full Time No Moon Lunar
Part time Smith
Tue 16 Aug 2016
at 18:48 | Forging A Clean Start"So be it demon I tried to save you some pain. I tried to give you an out. Now you fall!" Alistr sees a barrel of water nearby. Instead of attacking the demon directly he grabs his hammer and bull rushes the demon into the barrel pushing with all his might.
OOC: Basically trying to supercool him like you would while smithing. Think Doctor Doom at the end of the Fantastic Four movie. Yeah I know he puts pieces of himself into the water and it infects the soldiers. Stands to reason that it might work.
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Segev Stormlord
GM, 787 posts
Thu 18 Aug 2016
at 02:15 | Forging A Clean StartThe Blood of the Forge seems surprised by the frontal assault. His flesh is warm, dry stone that doesn't quite feel like it's burning hot, but leaves Alistr's flesh feeling raw and scratchy where the green blood evaporates against it. The demon is heavier than he looks, for so spindly a creature, but still no heavier than a small man, and is relatively easily forced into the barrel.
The water hisses softly, but with less violence than one might expect. The Blood of the Forge screams in outrage - or perhaps pain - as the flakes of stone peel from his outer layer of slate flesh, but the raw weeping green fire beneath hardens entirely to a black basalt broken by white crags. His joints on his too-long, multiple arms stiffen, but Alistr can't quite force his entire face under the water as the mannikin-like figure braces awkwardly in the narrow barrel.
Most eerily, though, the water doesn't boil, despite warming. It does, however, develop a blue luminescence unlike anything Alistr has ever seen; it doesn't seem to originate with the demon, just to suffuse the entire water of the barrel.
As he breaks contact, despite not feeling burnt, Alistr notices blisters, as from a bad over-exposure to the light of the Unconquered Sun. A sunburn the likes of which he hasn't experienced since Exalting.
The claws erupting from the ground writhe with the demon's muffled struggles.
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Alistr Hamrsoung
player, 109 posts
Full Time No Moon Lunar
Part time Smith
Sun 21 Aug 2016
at 05:16 | Forging A Clean Start As the demon starts to solidify Alistr just shakes his head. "You didn't deserve mercy or an easy way out, but I had to try anyway." He ponders the blue water and let's it be for a moment as he worries about the demon bathing in it first.
"So what exactly are you? Not Solar or Dragon-Blooded. Most assuredly not Lunar. So what else is there for you to be?" he pointedly ask Design. "I remember hints and stories of another type of Exalt, but no proof ever surfaced. Are you one of them?"
He leans on the Hammer for a moment to rest.
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Segev Stormlord
GM, 789 posts
Mon 22 Aug 2016
at 16:08 | Forging A Clean Start"I don't think it's dead yet, and we still have ... its creations to deal with," says the other man, hacking at the writhing limbs and eyeing the soldiers who've involuntarily swallowed some of them as their stomachs distend and their flesh begins to be veined with lava-like light. "Like you, I am Chosen of the Incarna; let us worry about details when this demon is banished.
"Chosen of the Slut, you mean!" cackles the demon, before inhaling water as its struggles submerge its head, and choking out steam.
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Alistr Hamrsoung
player, 110 posts
Full Time No Moon Lunar
Part time Smith
Tue 23 Aug 2016
at 17:33 | Forging A Clean Start"Dead no, but then again if I kill it I can't find out how it got here. I warned it to leave for Malfeas it didn't listen. Normally I don't torture, but it is a demon. You are right of course the demonlings need dispatching." Alistr starts by smacking the Blood of the Forge on the head right between the eyes if possible to stun him. Assuming that works Alistr starts smacking arms left and right. While singing to himself a songoing about smithing. Lost in his own little world he just keeps going til either the soldiers stop him, there are no more arms, or Blood of the Forge starts to get up.
"Oh the Anvil stands a light,
Bathing in the Forge's fire,
Gods forbid it draws the smith's ire, drumming metal that burns bright, he runs that Forge into night, making lathes and plenty of blades for the king and his kin, he tosses the finished dross into the bin."
or some thing along those lines.
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Segev Stormlord
GM, 791 posts
Mon 19 Sep 2016
at 01:53 | Forging A Clean StartBefore too much longer, Alistr and his companions finish destroying the rapidly-stiffening arms sprouting from the ground. But that leaves the poor men who couldn't be saved from having them leap down their throats, who writhed, shrank, and bloated into stone-fleshed man-like, hairless dwarves, and look about curiously. "Hey! Where're the women and booze? What's a bloke gotta do to get some quality entertainment 'round here?"
If he checks, Alistr will find the water barrel empty of the demon, with flakes of stone lining the bottom. Thta water is probably horrifically unsafe to drink by now.
"It seems to have fled," suggests the wielder of the too-slender short daiklaive. "Troubling. Hopefully the battle with the beastmen will end swiftly so we might find out what it was doing here. Do you think the Duke knows? Is it fomenting the coming war?"
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Alistr Hamrsoung
player, 111 posts
Full Time No Moon Lunar
Part time Smith
Wed 12 Oct 2016
at 15:30 | Forging A Clean Start"I do not know if the Duke knew. It seems unlikely that he would poison his own men, but nobility is not always so noble. As for where it went likely or at least hopefully went back to Malfeas. We need to round up the wine, women, and song men and at least contain them. The demon was most certainly fomenting the war or at least contributing to the outbreak. The real question is who or what sent him?" Alistr says as he starts counting the little men. "We need to find supplies to ward the camp's water. Non-corrosive metals would be best."
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Segev Stormlord
GM, 794 posts
Sun 30 Oct 2016
at 02:38 | Forging A Clean StartThe Duke, it turns out, did NOT know, but is recovering, along with most of his command staff.
Unfortunately, those who are not recovering are...mutating. Into demonic...things. With pot-bellies and stone skin that cracks with lava. Though they seem more interested in ale and...well, there aren't women around, but they keep asking for them.
They DO have suggestions for metals.
"We still have to face the beastmen," says the prince warningly.
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Alistr Hamrsoung
player, 112 posts
Full Time No Moon Lunar
Part time Smith
Wed 23 Nov 2016
at 19:11 | Forging A Clean StartAlistr sends some time helping round up the demonkin. Metals are usually helpful and Alistr is more than willing to listen to suggestions about metals. He probably won't use the information without testing it first, but he would file it away for future study at the least.
He asks Design"What I'd wonder is might there be another way to deal with these beastmen. Could a less direct route accomplish the same goal."
This message was lightly edited by the player at 08:05, Tue 29 Nov 2016.
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Segev Stormlord
GM, 796 posts
Tue 29 Nov 2016
at 00:55 | Forging A Clean Start"Less direct?" he asks, seeming mildly surprised. He looks over Alistr appraisingly. "What did you have in mind?"
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