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writeforfandoms · 3 years ago

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Merry Go Round of Life 12

Find my masterlist

Y’know what I give up on posting schedule. It’ll come when it comes y’all. I’m sorry. Words are occasionally hard.

So! Chapter twelve. The eagerly awaited Green Slime chapter. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Word count: 1.3k

This will be Din Djarin x f!reader eventually. Don’t hold your breath folks, this one’s a slow burn. Sort of.

Warnings: Raised voices. Din being Dramatic. Copious amounts of green slime.

In which there is green slime

By the time you and the child stepped into the castle, the both of you were shivering from cold, soaked through with rain and seawater. The storm, at least, had calmed after the monster had exploded.

Djarin was standing in front of the fireplace, and it took you a moment to realize a few things. The first was a very definite trail of green slime from the door to Djarin. The second was that he was still covered in it. And the third was that pieces of his armor were off.

His boots were next to the door, his cloak a sodden pile next to it. His thigh plates were on the floor by the fireplace, still dripping into a slowly-growing puddle of slime.

Djarin swore quietly, his gloved fingers fumbling with one of his pauldrons. His fingers slipped and he groaned quietly.

"Do you need help?" You offered, watching him.

He jerked as if startled and then huffed out a quiet laugh. "You two need to get warmed up," he said, just loud enough to be heard.

"I'm fine," you said dismissively. "And the child will warm up fastest in front of the fire." In record time, you had the exhausted little one of his clothes, which landed with wet thumps on the floor, and then wrapped in a blanket and seated on the chair in front of the fire. Peli obligingly roared up, and you gave her two new logs.

"I can't keep this up all night," she grumbled at you. But the way she turned towards the child undermined her words. You smiled. She was mostly grumbles, anyway.

"Now." You turned to the wizard and wrinkled your nose. There was a rather more significant puddle of mixed water and slime around him, spreading slowly outwards. You'd worry about that later. "What do you need help removing?"

"I've got it." But his hand slipped again on the pauldron, and you heard the aggravated sigh come from under the helmet.

"Let me help you." You stepped into his space, grateful you hadn't taken off your shoes yet, and stared at the glass where his eyes would be.

Djarin hesitated, silent for just long enough you were beginning to worry you had pushed him too far. Then he sighed and nodded once. "There are two latches," he said, voice brisk but lower than usual.

Your fingers were still cold but you found the latches easily enough, and the pauldron came off in your hands. It was both lighter and heavier than you expected. Heavier because you just weren't expecting the weight. But lighter because, for a solid piece of metal, it really wasn't that heavy.

"What is this?" You asked as you set the pauldron down, fingers going to the latches on the other side.

"The metal is called beskar," Djarin told you, his voice a little rough now. "It is what we use to craft armor, weapons, tools."

"It's lighter than I expected." You set the second pauldron down and then started searching for latches for the chest plate.

"Beskar is impossible to break," Djarin murmured, his voice even lower and rougher now. "It is reused among families."

The chest plate came off in your hands and you took a step back. Even without most of his armor, he was broad and thick. Then you blinked and shook your head a little to clear it.

You were still cursed, after all. And there was no way he'd even look at some 90-year-old woman.

"Turn around," you told him, twirling one finger demonstratively. "I'll take that back plate off too."

He turned wordlessly and let you remove the back plate. When you had set it down, you discovered he'd removed the bits covering his forearms himself.

"Thank you," he murmured, helmet tipped down to look right at you. "I appreciate the help. I need to wash this off, but you should warm up and get to bed."

You realized with a start that you were, in fact, shivering still. So you nodded, and Djarin nodded back before turning to leave. It was odd watching him go without the cape behind him.

Well, if you'd ever had any doubts, now you knew for certain. He was indeed a flesh and blood man under all that metal.

Shaking your head again, you finally focused on your own shivering form. First to go were your clothes, which landed next to the child's with a very wet splat. Fortunately you had a spare, dry set, so you pulled those on quickly. Already feeling warmer, you grabbed all the wet clothes and wrung them out as best you could, and then hung them to dry.

The next obvious problem was the green slime, which was now everywhere. A trail of it followed the wizard to the bathroom. The puddle in front of the fireplace had finally stopped advancing, but still managed to cover a good portion of the floor. The beskar armor shone silver-green in the flickering firelight because of the slime.

You really should get at least the stuff off the floor, before it stained.

It took a little searching, but you found a bucket, and used the shovel from the fireplace set to gloop the slime into the bucket.

(You emptied the bucket out into Kamino. It was still raining, even if it was more gentle now, and they already had a bunch of green slime. A little more wouldn't hurt.)

Once the majority of the slime was off the floor (with only a couple muttered swears, one scrape to the wood floor, and one stubbed toe), you looked at the armor. And sighed. If you waited until morning, it would be dried on. But you were so tired.

Maybe if you sat and rested for a minute…

You woke in the chair, Peli down to a muted flame low among her logs, with a crick in your neck from how your head had fallen back against the head of the chair. You groaned as you sat up, cracking your neck and back as you stretched and muttering something about falling asleep on the job.

The child was nowhere to be seen, but you weren't concerned. The wizard had likely taken him up to bed. That was all.

The wizard had also put a blanket over you. Your cheeks warmed at the sweet gesture.

A dull green gleam caught your attention in the low light, and you turned your head to look. The wizard's armor still lay on the floor, the slime now dried to the metal. Which meant the wizard had left it. Djarin had left it there.

It was the first time to your knowledge that he had been without his armor around you, and you felt a little flustered by that. Why you felt flustered, you chose not to examine too closely.

Well, you might as well go lay in your actual bed, since you'd woken. You stood with a couple more cracks and hobbled over to your bed.

And then stopped cold. Djarin and the child were both dead asleep in your bed. Djarin still had the helmet on, but otherwise he was sprawled out on your bed. One leg was hanging half-off the bed. One big hand rested against the child's back, almost hysterically large in comparison but still so gentle.

You smiled, completely unable to help yourself. Too adorable. Really. Carefully, you tucked Djarin's wayward leg back onto the bed, and returned to the chair. One more night of sleeping in the chair wouldn't kill you. Unable to resist, you took one last look at the two sleeping peacefully on your bed and smiled.

Maybe tomorrow you would get a clue for how to help Peli and Djarin.

Taglist: @saradika @zinzinina @miraclesabound @ohheyitsokay @anaaaispunk @quica-quica-quica @queridopascal @fandom-blackhole @pedrocentric @shoopidly @beskarprincessjenny @sarahjkl82-blog @cannedsoupsucks @liviiii98 @adriiibell @seasonschange-butpeopledont @princessxkenobi @thirddeadlysin @pbeatriz @oonajaeadira @kiizhikehn-cedar @withakindheartx @linkpk88 @pedro4ever @evyiione @janebby @anditsmywholeheart @amneris21 @recklessworry @the-feckless-wonder @kotemorons @pedrostories @grogusmum @eri16 @idreamofboobear @pintsizemama @stevie75 @luxmundee @kirsteng42 @horton-hears-a-honk @reader-without-a-story @5pectre @alexxavicry @elegantduckturtle @litakino @soltaasbruxas @pjkimrn @jaime1110 @trash-dino-5000 @mandalwhorean @dindjarinsloverx

#merry go round of life #din djarin x reader #din djarin x you #din is a drama queen

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give-grian-rights · 4 years ago

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HERMITCRAFT 8 LIVEBLOGGING

fifteen hermits worth of liveblogging. i am losing my mind. LONG POST AHEAD.

JOE HILLS (First HC8 Video)

Mumbo did the speech. he forgot everything he was supposed to say <3

Pearl and Gemini were just .in a pit . having stuff thrown onto them

Every Hermit is staying on the same continent !!

FIRST DEATHS VERY QUICKLY, Iron Golems took out Tango and Etho (maybe more?)

Joe seems to be the only one looting the chests

Evil Jevin !!

Evil Xisuma appearance on Jevin’s 60 second video!

Pearl has something planned for an “archeticual wonder” for a resupply area upon death?

Stress, Xisuma and Joe are capturing villagers and starting up a resupply debut.

Bdubs is killed by Cleo and is now OUT FOR BLOOD

First death counts- Etho, Tango, Bdubs, Cleo?

Cleo was killed by Keralis

Joe has now supplied Cleo with weapons and food . She left but not before saying “Time to kill BDubs again!”

Gemini was killed by Bdubs! They both died and are now at spawn.

Pearl was killed by Cleo

Pearl is planning a respawn inn !!

Cleo was killed by Iskall

Cleo was killed by Pearl

False, Stress, and Gemini team up??? AA!!! they brought a delivery of supplies to Joe <3

i wish i knew what was happening on that end .

APPARENTLY XISUMA IS ONTO MAKING THE SECOND VILLAGER BREEDER ALREADY ??

Iskall is the first with Diamonds??

Breathe in that ash !

WAIT IS TANGOS EYES LIKE THAT RN BECAUSE HES TEAMED WITH KERALIS AND BDUBS ???

KERALIS, BDUBS, AND TANGO TRIED TO DO A SHAKEDOWN ON JOE. HE TRIED TO DROP LAVA, GOT HIMSELF ONTO TWO HEARTS BECAUSE HE PLACED IT ON HIMSELF, AND IS NOW SWIMMING OUT INTO THE SWAMP

the big eyed trio are now off to shake down Gemini

Joe fell in Lava in the Nether

Joe Death To Lava Two: Electric Boogaloo

Joe drowned trying to kill a glowsquid

WATCH JOE’S VIDEO OH MY GOD SEAN HILLS RECAP RAP??? MY BELOVED????? i am gonna be streaming this unironically later LIKE OH MY GOD THIS SLAPS. ALSO THE CREDITS AT TEH END IS HILARIOUS

Zedaph Episode Recap

Zed gave us a recap of the continent every Hermit will be living on !!

Wouldn’t recommend Zedaph as the first video for the season, he skips the intro/speech but it’s Zedaph and hes making it fun!! Lots of nice editing :)

~SCIENCE TIME !~

Zedaph.. why is your starter base made out of concrete ?

There are no sheeps whatsoever on his mountain

Hes calling his lab an icecream sandwich..yeah i see it

Zed tried to make a portal underater...f

Scar died to a creeper </3

Zedaphs base is gonna be tracking how long hes there/someones loading the chunk!

XISUMA LIVE BLOGGING

A cool cinema scene of him becoming an axolotl!! <3

NOW I CAN SEE IT, GRIAN WAS THE FIRST DEATH!! Death by Iron Golem!!

XIsuma’s baseplans need over 45 THOUSAND BLOCKS TO BE PLACED

He’s also planning on making a shulkershell farm!!

i’m not gonna lie ! talking axolotl X is horrifying ! thanks !

Day one Villager Breeder... chaos.

Xisuma Derp! looked straight at a buncha wool and said how badly he needed beds and then walked away

THE GIRLS CAME OVER AND CONVINCED HIM HE NEEDS TO MOVE THE DESIGN OVER MY FIVE BLOCKS FOR SWAMP VILLAGERS..

THE GIRLS ARE JUST LAUGHING AT HIM AND HIS VILLAGER TROUBLES

day one and Xisuma has got his axolotl!!

Very pretty starterbase!!

XB’s

..I’m not gonna lie theres not much to say!! He’s very calm :) he says hes going into it without a plan, and htat last season was the only time he had any thought of what he was gonna do.

He made a real nice starter house and thats about it!

Cleo’s

Bdubs: “She ain’t gonna hurt me!! i’m invincible, babey!”

Cleo learnt that BDubs will never hurt her even if she deserves it . I am starting to realize why she kills him

SHE DECIDED SHES GONNA BE A PROPER CHAOS GREMLIN THIS SEASON...

AISDJASID CLEO GOT PAID TO KILL BDUBS?? HDUIAIHSI SCAR WHY

“Alright I found my mission for the season! Murder.”

Cleo, Mumbo, Grian, and Scar are all holed up in a cave together!

..Scar died from a skeleton !

Cleo has now split from Grian and Mumbo! Scar is missing in action

CLEO FOUND A GOAT

SHES KILLING THE GOAT???

she got a HORSE <3 and Joe gave her a saddle! I think her name is..Widget?

She LOVES the candles for shamboo n waterbottles and bits n bobs for her armorstands!!

Got her Armorstand stickgod book <3

Geminitay POV

NEW HERMIT NEW HERMIT NEW HERMIT!!

She has a LOVELY voice!!

The pov of her in a hole . being surrrounded . is kinda hilarious

It might’ve been Etho who was first death?? I GENUIENLY CANNOT TELL BECAUSE OF EDITING

All the murder was just for heads!

Seriously her voice is. wow

WE LOVE A QUEEN WHO KNOWS HOW TO CRAFT A SHIELD WITHOUT USING THE GUIDE <3

False, Gemini, and Stress are on the great journey for MOSS !

Gem just blew their minds with the moss.

TANGO KERALIS AND BDUBS ARE BACK Keralis: “Show the diamonds show the diamonds show the diamonds!” Gem: “Keralis. This is not how you make friends.”

The boys suecessfully recieved a diamond each

Etho n Iskall are travelling together!! You dont see those two together often

Etho got a glowsquid head!!

Gem: “Etho doesn’t share, is what i’m learning..?”

Etho hooked her with a fishing rod and said she has to do what he said .

In order to get the diamonds, Tango, Keralis, and BDubs placed down a sign saying “Gem is Great!” and Gem used a glow inksack on it.

Etho: “So..What is this? Do you have an ego, or this a motivational thing, or..?” He said, while laughing

Iskall: “I think its really funny that you have set your base up in the middle of a birch forest.” Gem: “I love birch forests! Do you not like my birch forest? Iskall: “I love it, yeah.” Gem: “This is the best biome in the game, Iskall.” Iskall: “Mmmm..” Etho: “I’m pretty sure I heard Iskall talking earlier that like, of all the biomes in the game, there was one he hated more than anything. Gem: “Oh really? And what was that one?” Iskall: “..Taiga.” Gem: “Taiga.. That’s true, thats a good one, thats a good one.” Iskall: “Don’t like Taiga.” Gem: “Mhm.” Etho: “Which one do you hate more than anyone?” Iskall: “..Diorite fields. Thats a bad one.” Etho: “Yeah thats a bad one.” Gem: “Didn’t know about that one. Well make sure to avoid’em. Birch forests are really good.” Iskall: “I’m a big fan of birch forests.” Gem: “Yeah, me too, me too. I’m glad we’re on the same page :) This is so beautiful! All the white and- and the like zebra stripes! is fantastic.” Iskall: “I..Um.. Yes.”

OH SHE’S CANADIAN,, ETHO HAS A FRIEND /j

She’s still in college :O SHE’S A SCIENTIST?? SHES WORKING AT A HOSPITAL?? POG!!

She accidentally found an enchanted golden apple in a mineshaft!! she thinks its the first she ever found in survival!!

She has a cow, sheep, and a few crop farms set up!! Her starter house has INTERRIOR!

SHE CHANGED HER SKIN AND ITS SO PRETTY AND HAS OVERALL AND I LOVE IT!!

shes doing a cottage core inspired base!

WOAHH!!! SHE MADE HTE MOST GOREGOUS CUSTOM TREE I’VE EVER SEEN ??

BDUBS IS HERE and he is so so so impressed by the tree ?!

also hes carrying a clock.. :(

He’s here with a present!

HE BROUGHT BAMBOO!

she thinks its so funny that he stops conversations to sleep AOIDHFEAUI\

SCARS

WE GOT A TRANSITION SCENE!! the canonical reason for the bed in his old village always being occupied is because underneath it, was his wizard portal!

Bdubs: “It’s a new season! You’re the little guy now!”

They are all very amused by that ^

they’re rubbing the fleece of bdubs jacket .

Bdubs: “Have a nice rub :)” PLEASEAHSIOJDIUASLDHIASDA

His starter base is gonna be a wagon and he wants the end game to be a bioshock esque skyscraper!

he confused a horse for a player . flashback to iskall thinking mumbo was a mob

PEOPLE THINK MUMBO DOESNT HAVE PANTS ON.... </3

Scar, Mumbo, and Grian.. have NO braincells. at all. THey just placed a crafting table with a boat on top with a bed on top with a boat on top .

this is what BROS FOR LIFE looks like.

BOATEM POLE !

SCAR IS STUCK UNDERGROUND IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT IRL AND HAS NO PICKAXE..

AND HE DIED TO A CREEPER .

it seems like Grian, Mumbo, and Scar are working together !!!! HOLY SHIT !!

THERES SO SO SO MANY FARMS???????

he died several times trying to catch a skeleton with a sword

FIRST CHEST MONSTER OF THE SEASON <3

SCAR JSUT TOLD BDUBS HE LOOKS LIKE OSCAR THE CROUCH... BDUBS CANNOT EVEN ARGUE

OH NO.... GRIAN WENT AFK IN A HOLE . WITHOUT A HELMET .

THEY PUT A GLOWSQUID HEAD ON HIM

OH MY GOD MUMBO MADE A NOTEBLOCK SONG?? AJUDA

SCARS BUILTING IS SO SO SOOS GOREGOUS SERIOUSLY GO WATCH THE VIDEO OH MY GOD ITS HUGE

its a giant ass house boat wagon . its pulled by a llama . that killed him . so now its trapped, pulling hte agon, forever

Grian: “..Thats a very big house, for a very little hat.”

GRIANS SUPER SPECIAL EGG??

SCAR PUNCHED IT..

they really came out here . and killed the egg already.

Scar: “..I touched the thing”

TANGO POV

We see the three big eyed boys forming <3 they interrupted Tangos intro

THEY’RE BULLYING HIM ABOUT HAVING SMALL EYES AHIDUIASUHDWIS

HE TRIED TO CALL THE TRIO TEAM BUG EYE... THE OTHERS ARE VERY OFFENDED

they found an axolotl and Bdubs was TERRIFIED just screaming “WHAT IS THAT YELLOW THING?!”

BDUBS IS ATTACKING IT ???

okay nope Bdubs caught one and Tango lost it

Bdubs is naming his axolotl Idiot

AMAZING HOUSE. WHY IS TANGO SO GOOD AT BUILDING AND REDSTONE??

Impulse POV

MUMBO TRIED TO PLACE DOWN A BERRY BUSH TO HURT IMPULSE . HE FORGOT HOW BUSHES WORK..

I DIDNT EVEN NOTICE THAT IMPULSE WAS IN THE BOATEM POLE

so it looks like those four are hteo nes who grouped up together

PEARL BROKE THE CONSTITUION SHE GOT IN THE WRONG BOAT SMH

THIS IS SEASON EIGHT! FIVE BROS !

So its gonna be about five people in the same area!!

YOO!! Fantasy build for Impulse!!

G gave Impulse a spyglass, they had a fun moment of zooming in on eachothers face and complimenting eachother IHAUDIHAW

Grian and Impulse worked on an xp farm!

ASHDUIWAHISD GRIAN JUST LOGGED ON INFRONT OF HIM

a pillager stole his boat . not just any pillager . the one with a banner. </3

he has to live with Mumbo tuning a song .. </3 haha

Mumbo POV

it took fifteen seconds until Grian ran in during Mumbos intro

CONFIRMED? GRIAN WAS FIRST DEATH?

SECOND PERSON TO THINK MUMBOS PANTS ARE SKIN COLOR. GRIAN..

Grian: “Can you..Briefly explain why you’re just wearing a hawaiian shirt?” Mumbo: “Uh- what do you mean ‘just wearing a hawaiin shirt? I have shorts on as-well, dude”

FOLLOWED BY

Mumbo: “Can you explain why you’re wearing a red jumper?” Grian: “You know- you know i was born with this!”

MUMBO AND GRIAN STOLE THE BOAT LOOT FROM RENDOC

I THINK RENDOC JUST STOLE THE DIAMOND MUMBO THREW??

Grian: “Is that Scar?” Mumbo: “I can’t see past your giant waffle!”

DSFSDFJIOA they did an edit where they placed down a boat, both Mumbo and Grian got in, they made noises and then bopped up on top of the ravine they were in <3

THEY HAVE NO BRAINCELL THEY JUST PLACED DOWN A BENCH AND SAID “THIS IS THE MARK OF OUR VILLAGE!” and then placed a torch and a boat and a bed and aANOTHER BED..

..Mumbo is trying to be a pacifist this season!

Grian’s taunting him with beheaded things

And obviously part of being pacifist means he’s gonna be vegetarian in minecraft!

..he cannot use monster farms because pacifisim..

Mumbo was in the middle of reading the magical Timmy shack that Tango made (did i remember to mention that? who knows) and IN THE MIDDLE OF GETTING TO THE PART ABOUT IF YOU REMOVE STUFF FROM THE CHEST, NOTHING WILL BE ADDED IN IT AGAIN. Grian opened the chest . Mumbo SHOUTED HIAUDHUW Grian jumped man

They renamed it “Cave of Do Not Enter” HIAUEDUH

Mumbo and Scar BOTH did not know- at least Mumbo didn’t, Scar forgot, that podzol spawns from two-by-two spruce..

him and his guitar song to be played underneath his house.. it goes with the aesthetic i suppose

MAN HE NEEDS SO MUCH HAYBALES I FORGOT THATS NEEDED FOR THE TUNE HE WANTS

Mumbo: “What.. On Earth.. Scar, it’s meant to be a starterbase, buddy! What is this? This is many things, many many things, a starterbase is NOT one of them!”

HE LITERALLY DIDNT KNOW THAT THE DRAGON EGG TELEPORTS... WHEN YOU TOUCH IT...

BDUBS

nothing special we havent seen yet!! just him screaming about axolotls.

He was working in the Mesa in his intro, skipping the “speech” from Mumbo

He released Idiot the Axolotl and lost it .

Him SCREAMING “Gemini” is HILARIOUS

While Gemini gave away those three diamonds, Keralis got so excited he won a bet with Tango and Bdubs, that he gave back . two of the diamonds . and none of htem released until well after they left

Bdubs: “That’s why i have my mwoss skin!” PLEASE I LOVE THE WAY HE SAYS IT.. make the moss hood.. REAL..

it took me a while to figure out what his base is but i LOVE IT so so much!!!

Nothing much new to add !!

Stress pov

please i love her . very good !! False seems to have joined her sheerly because Stress sounded like she knew what she was doing. she does not.

False felt peerpressured and asked Stress for permission to fight her because everyone was killing eachother .

It ended up with Stress following False. they found a village!

ISKALL only saw him one other time today!!

JEVIN APPEARS AGAIN !

XISUMA FELL INTO HTE BREEDER AND IT WAS SO FUNN IUAHHYIAUSD

Ren: “Ya look goregous, Stress!” Stress: “Thanks! Don’t murder my dog!”

She’s so proud of herself for caving!! (with False n Gem

Iskall blew up!

..Iskall fell from a high place

Stress has a LOVELY ravine base!!

False

False wants to become pirates with Stress <3

gatekeep gaslight girlboss

BIG OL MUSHROOM HOUSE !!

it looks like a mushroom church and i LOVE IT.

Nothing new we didn’t see from Gem. She does want to come up with a banner design for her base, though!

Grian

..Mumbo just thought Grian had a purpose so decided to follow him <3

ALSO HIS INTRO, AS HE JOKED ABOUT IN THE OTHERS VIDEO, WAS, IN FACT, THE BOATEM POLE

Grian is SO PROUD of the fact taht they got good loot from a treasure map. Ren and Doc are NOT IMPRESSED

Grian: “Lets go, potato boy!”

Mumbo: “I don’t have to replace everything I break! Peace Love and Plants- are these plants..?” He says, mining amethyst

pants

he who controls the egg, controls the server... Grian.. you’re doing great sir

...He decided.. his goal.. is to make his OWN..caves and cliffs update... HELLO..?

Grian was the first one to kill the enderdragon, MAN. Speedrunning career WHEN? /j

Grian: “And now [Mumbo] is flexing on my bed!”

he might not have a base. but he has an egg.

It is now 2am. i cannot do this anymore. This will be continued.. tomorrow!

#long post #SERIOUSLY I CANNOT BELIEVE HOW LONG I WENT #spoilers #hermitcraft 8 #hermitcraft 8 spoilers #hc 8 #hc 8 spoilers #mcyt #mcytblr #hermitblr #hermitcraft #mika-posts

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xmalereader · 5 years ago

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The Mandalorian X Male Reader

|| Masterlist ||

@ifreakinglovewritingsomuch

Requested: Hiii. I LOVE YOUR WRITING. It's amazing!!! Would you mind writing another fic for the mandalorian x male reader. There just isn't enough male reader stuff and I'm obsessed with The mandalorian. Maybe the reader is a bounty hunter as well and they are "rivals" but actually very much in love °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°

Warnings: rivalry, lovers, kissing, slight flirting , baby yoda.

Dyn’s mission was suppose to be short. Get the child and turn it in, get paid and then move on. But yet here he is, stuck with a child and another bounty hunter that he stumbled upon on the way. Now, Y/n was a little annoying for the mandalorian. He kept threatening him which caused him to threaten back, fights would break every often and arguments over the smallest things.

Sometimes the child would just stand back and watched at the two grown adult males argue over something small and simple, like: who’s blaster is Better or who has a better idea for their next job? It was always the same argument, over and over again.

That it came to a point where they got used to each other and the arguing would slowly turn into a flirting situation. None of the two took it seriously but that’s how they suddenly got along, even other people that the mandalorian had stumbled upon during missions had mentioned about the flirting but the mandalorian would simply let it slide, like it was nothing serious and were only teasing each other.

Of course no one believed the two, only letting it go and allowing them to countinue their weird lovers quarrel.

“Where’s the kid?” Dyn asks while frowning under his mask. Y/n lifts his hand up to point over to the bed where the child was sleeping soundly. “He fell asleep awhile ago so don’t wake him up or I’ll blast you.” He warns with a small glare and moves over to gently cover up the child with an extra blanket. Smiling at the strange creature that they have suddenly taken in as their own.

“Well as long as he is safe and close then I won’t make a sound.” The Mando said and makes his way around his space craft and grabs some materials that he would need for later. They have landed on a small planet with a very small population, not many people lived here and it was mainly used for reinforces or stops. “where you going?” Y/n asks as he gives the mandalorian a glance and raised a brow, leaning against the wall with crossed arms and a smirk on his face. “Find something interesting out there?” He teases.

The mandalorian turns to face Y/n and sighs deeply, “I’m gonna go and find the kid something to eat, after that will be heading out soon and find another planet that’ll give me a job.”

“Us a job.” Y/n corrects as he tossed him a small blaster. “I’m not going to continue babysitting, I’m itching to get a job as well.” He mumbles out and bites his lip, reaching up to push his hair back and groan. “Just do what you’re going to do quick so that we can leave sooner.” The mandalorian smirks under the helmet and adjusts his things on him and hums. “Maybe ill just take my time,”

Y/n glares. “You little-!”

“Kid is sleeping.” Dyn says as he shuts Y/n up, watching as the other closed his mouth and groans deeply. Looking back to the kid only to see It stir a little before it went back to being still and sleeping.

“Be quick or I’m leaving you.”

“Yes, dear.” Dyn sighs out as he steps down the ship and makes his way out.

Y/n was blushing deeply at the small pet name, he runs over to the opened gate and shouts. “Don’t call me that!”

“I won’t, dear.” The mando calls back once he gets on his speeder and drives off without another word.

“Stupid mando...” Y/n turns back inside and passes by the small bed that the child was sleeping in, the small child was awake. His eyes were all tired and his ears were droopy as he stares at Y/n with big eyes.

Y/n bites his lip as he stared back at the kid before sighing in defeat. “Fine you win.” He reaches over to pick him up and smiled at him. The child cooed once he was picked up and his ears perked up in excitement. “Dyn will be back soon, he went out to get some supplies for our next long flight.” He explains to the child as he walks outside and sits on the ground, under the shade with the child between his legs. He allows him to walk around and play in the tall grass, playing in small puddles as y/n sighs happily and stares off into the distance, waiting for the mando to return.

It took Dyn all night to get what he needed for the three of them, getting supplies wasn’t easy since he didn’t have as much money but sometimes he still found ways to make it work.

Once he returned the sun was already setting, he steps off the speeder as he sees both Y/n and the kid playing in the grass. Y/n was randomly weaving a small grass crown for the child as he sticks his tongue out in concentration and smiled proudly at his finished work, “All done!” He said and placed it on top of the kids head who cooed happily and squeaks.

The mandalorian stood from a distance as he watched the two bond. Tilting his head to the side as he smiled at the warm sight.

Y/n looks up to see the mandalorian and grunts as he stands up to stretch his muscles, “Hey look daddy’s back.” He calls out.

“Wouldn’t that make you the mommy then?” Dyn grabs his bag and heads over to Y/n and bends down to pick up the child. Y/n gasps and gets all flustered, “I am not the mommy! For all we know I am the number one dad that he prefers and you’ll be number two.” He exclaimed. Only earning a look from the mandalorian which he couldn’t see but could easily tell that he was giving him a look that meant he wasn’t pleased.

“I doubt that.”

“Wanna bet on it?” Y/n challenges.

The mandalorian thinks about it for a second before turning to face y/n and extends his hand out to seal the deal. Y/n grins before shaking his hand and giggling evilly. “Ill win.”

“And whys that?”

“Because I always win.” He pouts out which the mandalorian could only roll his eyes and set down the kid before handing Y/n the bag. “Put this inside while I start a fire and prepare our meal for tonight before we have to leave.”

Y/n lets out a surprised scream as he catches the heavy bag and grunt. “Geez what’s in here rocks?” He questions as he heads inside to put away the bag.

The mandalorian was able to start a fire and cook them up something, serving the kid first before he makes a bowl for both him and Y/n. The other was laying out some blankets and a bag as a pillow for the kid to rest on, “Here.” He hands Y/n a bowl of bone broth who accepted it and sits next to the mando. He watches the kid eat it up as he slurps it up. “What are we going to do with the kid?” Y/n asks as he drinks his own broth. “What’d you mean?” The mando watched the child as well. “We cant always keep him safe, he’s just a kid and he needs a proper place and a proper home.” He whispered out in a small soft tone as he lowers down his bowl and gently taps the rim, the mandalorian noticed this and figured out that the other was worried. “Will protect him, I mean you did promise the first Time we met.” He leans back against a log as the kid sets down it’s bowl and copies the mandalorian, walking over to the laid out blankets as he lied down on them. Y/n chuckled at the kid copying the mandalorian. “Your the dad, alright.” He says as he sets down his own bowl.

“You sound like a worried parent.” Y/n’s face heats up as he glared at the mando. “That’s because I am worried! I’m always worried over the kid and I’m also worried about you sometimes!! Always leaving and never returning until late at night and then-“ Y/n stops mid sentence at the realization. “Oh gods.” He buries his face into his hands in embarrassment. “Not a worried parent, huh?” Said the mandalorian.

Y/n peaks between his fingers and sighs, lowering down his hands from his face as he looks at the mandalorian. “You know you don’t make a bad parent either, I’ve seen the way you act around the kid.”

“That’s because he reminds me to much of myself, couldn’t leave him with anyone I don’t trust.” Y/n only smiles at the mandalorians words. He leans over to plant a kiss against the mando’s helmet. Dyn expected himself to flinch away but he simply accepted the kiss and smiles under the helmet he wore. “Wow, your a parent and a good kisser.” He teases.

Y/n pouts and hits him with a branch before moving over to cuddle next to the kid, using one of the blankets to cover up the kid. “I am not a parent.” He hisses out quietly before lying his head back and holding the kid close.

The mandalorian chuckles as he looks up at the stars, “Yeah you are...” he whispers out as he hears the sound of crickets and soft snoring coming from Y/n.

#male reader #the mandalorain #the mandalorian x male reader #dyn jarren x male reader #dyn jarren

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traceemerald · 4 years ago

Text

Before I start the journal entry today, I’d like to say something.

Happy Halloween, this journal entry probably won’t be Halloween-based, maybe next year.

Anyway...

-October 31st, Journal Entry 49-

Yesterday, I logged out in my gold farm, so I was there when I logged back in, so I guess I’ll start today by finishing the repairs on my pickaxe, and I might as well repair my shovel while I’m here.

Once I got home, while putting a few things away, I realized I had an infinity and flame bow in my valuables chest, so I combined it with the bow I was carrying with me, and named the result “Shooting Star”, I can’t put mending on it, so I may have to make another one in the future.

I think I’ll do a little bit of decorating now.

Since I need leaves for something, I just realized that I never made a pair of shears in this world.

I think my shovel will work, it has silk touch.

And it looks like I have some visitors, though not friendly ones.

There’s another one to the left, off-camera, I only realized he was there after I took the picture.

I killed all 3 of them, I couldn’t find the patrol captain anywhere.

And yes, a silk touch shovel can collect leaves, although I can’t instamine them.

Somehow I didn’t realize that I’m in a mesa and the plants I put in my bedroom look dead, maybe I should find something else to put there.

I think I’ll put some flower pots in there, so now I’m going to search for some light blue flowers.

But before I go, I will actually need shears for a little bit of Halloween decorating.

Yeah, it’s just 2 jack-o-lanterns.

Anyway, I have flowers to look for.

For some reason there’s a red sand block on a tree.

After my search was done, I didn’t find the particular flower I was looking for, but I did pick up a bunch of other flowers I found.

Here’s a picture of my bedroom, now that I’ve actually put things in it.

Everything in it is purely decorative, the only functional parts are the bed, crafting table, chest of music discs, and jukebox.

I’m also going to make a respawn anchor, in case I ever build a nether base, but I don’t have any glowstone, so I’ll have to go get some of that.

After I did that, I upgraded my helmet, since it only had protection III and respiration III, so I upgraded it to protection IV and added mending.

I also don’t have an enchanted axe, but I’m done playing for today, so hopefully I’ll remember to make one tomorrow.

-End Journal Entry 49-

#minecraft #journal entry

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ask-elementalhermitcraft · 6 years ago

Text

Crickets

[1.5k words]

[Angst/hurt]

[Evil Xisuma/Z, With minor mentions of: Joe Hills, Docm77, RentheDog]

Xisuma woke up.

It was 12:28 PM, a clear sunny day. He checked by clicking a button on the helmet that was next to him.

Crickets were chirping in the background as he sat up in his bed, stretching.

the mountain base that he lived in was surprisingly very comfortable. It was cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

He hated to sleep in late by accident, but today he’ll let himself slide. Simply because it was such a good weathered day.

The man slid the helmet he wore over his head, prepared for the day that was ahead of him, and walked out to fly away to the central mesa biome.

He landed lightly into the district; Xisuma looked around, searching for any of his fellow hermits in sight. It was too quiet. He could hear ringing in his ears.

He heard commotion to the left of him. Towards one of the emptier spaces of the central hub.

Xisuma approaches and pushes through the small gathered crowd.

The sight was not pretty.

A barely recognizable body was on the ground, covered in blood, the cloth they once wore was ripped in claw-like marks, alongside with multiple stab wounds…

And what seemed like flowers. Especially roses spilling from his mouth.

Their once bright red shirt was covered in moss and vines with thorns. Someone was crying beside them, they were turned around. But Xisuma could tell who it was.

It was a good friend of the victim.

Xisuma bowed them next to their friend, he said something to him to comfort him.

The friend begged him to rewind.

He stared back in shock.

“You know I can’t do that!” He remembers.

“That’s a lie! You can bring him back! P-please… You have brought other people back before, why not this time?!” The crying person screamed, grabbing Xisuma by his collar. The others stared in silence, shifting uncomfortably.

“Iskall. Things aren’t that simple. There are things out of my control, I’m not a god.” He told him as much as he told himself. As much as he was tempted to rewind, he knew he can’t. Xisuma doesn’t know what he’ll be facing, he was afraid. Afraid of the unknown.

He was thrown harshly against the ground, it hurt, sure. But nothing compared to the Swedish man that was crying in anger, instead of grief.

He stormed off, the other hermits tried to follow him, to plead and stop him. But he roughly threw ice spikes at them, pushing them back. Even injuring them.

A southern man in a blue shirt came jogging to him, helped him up and said something in his soft, comforting voice. And had said something about scheduling a meeting about this soon.

Xisuma hid behind a smile. Sure, he had said. Before turning back to the charred body.

The person they needed the most in this situation is dead.

If he was here, he would probably crack a joke or two, to brighten the mood. Despite how solemn the mood would be, it would still feel better.

He spent the day sitting at his base, instead of working on any projects. He simply sat there, holding his head.

These rivalries were never meant to be like this.

Night came.

Xisuma found himself in the shopping district mesa again, in the same spot he was in this morning.

The body has long been removed, probably carried off by the other ice wielder to have some kind of funeral.

He had a feeling.

A horrible one.

The meeting has been scheduled; most of the hermits were here. But the lightning wielder was nowhere to be seen, one half of the Ice duo was missing as well.

A burning sensation scorched into his stomach.

He had a hunch of what might have- no. What happened.

The helmeted lad stormed out of the small makeshift meeting room, leaving the hermits dumbfounded and confused.

There was a large ice spike, directly outside of the building.

It was definitely not here before.

The air was freezing. The surrounding plants were all frosted over; despite it being the middle of summer. Trails of leaves scattered.

Yelling was heard in the background.

Xisuma rushed to the source, the area was completely frozen over. Buildings suddenly overgrown with vines and plants. In the center, the ice wielder held the creeper up by his neck. The green-skinned man hissed, his skin slowly becoming bluer over time from the cold. Frost crackles and spread from the mob’s neck.

It was too late.

Just as he was about to step in and approach them, the dreadful death messages appeared.

Two of them.

>Docm77 was slain by Iskall85

>Iskall85 was suffocated by Docm77

How does he know it’s not normal death?

Their body didn’t disappear.

Their items didn’t fall to the ground like normal.

It was just there. Cold. Dead bodies.

These were the first deaths Xisuma had witnessed himself. And will not be the last…

…

——

...resetting…

Reset complete.

——

Xisuma woke up.

It was 10:28 PM, a clear sunny day. He checked by clicking a button on the helmet that was next to him. He could sleep for another two hours. But maybe not.

Crickets were chirping in the background as he sat up in his bed-

His head was ringing.

He pushed himself out of the bed, and went to grab his helmet--

Didn’t he just do this in his dream?

He pushed the feelings away. Refusing to let the memories bother him.

But it’s good to be cautious anyways.

It was two hours earlier than when he woked up in his dream. Xisuma quickly stood up, leaving his bed unmade and messy. He grabbed the elytra that sat on the crafting banch and took off.

He has to get to him.

Xisuma flew to the shopping district, circling around to hopefully spot the weredog. He spotted him near the log shop they had shared. He landed in a hurry, catching the other off in surprise.

“Hey X? What’s up- why do you look so-”

“Come with me.” He heard himself say, and pulled his friend by his arm.

He was pratically running, he didn’t care Ren was tumbling, he just had to get him out. Right now before it was too late.

“Who’s the little bird that ratted out my plan?” A voice with a hissing undertone spoke. Xisuma stopped dead in his tracks, the weredog bumping into him as a result.

It was the creeper man himself.

“Doc.” He whispered. “Please reconsider.”

“Do you think your words can stop me, Xisuma?” He heard the man said, before something cold stabbed him through the chest. Right through his armor.

He collasped.

Xisuma breathed heavily and fast. His vision was blurry, the last thing he saw.

Was Ren getting stabbed. Pratically chocked by plants.

And with the blue summer sky, I hear the crickets cry

And fall right back into another dark sleep

>Xisuma was slain by Docm77

>Renthedog suffocated by Docm77

——

...resetting…

Reset complete.

——

...resetting…

Reset complete.

——

...resetting…

Reset complete.

——

...resetting…

Reset complete.

——

...resetting…

Reset complete.

——

...resetting…

Reset complete.

——

...resetting…

Reset complete.

——

…

It has been.

So.

Damn.

Long.

Xisuma woke up in his white bed once again. Countless times.

Maybe he should just stop getting up.

He has refused to get up for the last few glitches. Just watching the death messages scroll by in his helmet, and only to find himself to wake up again despite him sitting in bed just a few seconds ago.

He picks up his sword that is by his bed. Dragging it along the cold stone floor.

The crickets are singing loudly. The heat’s mocking him, as ringing in his head got worse and worse.

Nothing remain in his head, other than the though to solve the issue. And just to get it over with.

He finds Doc by the edge of the shopping district.

He strikes his sword down, straight down the other’s shoulders.

Spraying a shade of red, bright red.

Doc said something before he had drop to the ground, but Xisuma did not hear.

>Docm77 was slain by Xisuma

The helmetless man saw Ren in the distinct, he pulled his bow backwards.

Lucky for him, Ren never has armor on.

He let lose of his hold on the arrow, it flew across the air. Striking the man straight in the chest.

>Renthedog was slain by Xisuma

Pulling his diamond sword out from the creeper’s chest, shaking off some of the blood. And began to drag it along the ground once more.

“Monsters!” They called him. Those familar, happy faces now twisted with pain and fear.

Xisuma didn’t hear.

It was almost like he was on autopilot.

He came upon the last of the hermits, with a detached robot arm in his hands.

Joe said something.

Just like Doc.

We all just come full circle, huh?

He pushed his worn out sword down.

>Joehillssays was slain by EvilXisuma

…

Item deleted.

#elemental hermits #elemental hermitcraft au #ehcau #elemental!ex #ex #evilxisuma #evil xisuma #writinngs #mod al #tw blood #tw murder #tw trauma #hermitcraft #4/1/19 #xisuma #xisumavoid #al's sad time hours

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vulpinmusings · 5 years ago

Text

Ski’tar and Friends part 4: Ulmarid the Death World

The adventures of Ski’tar, Vemir, and Six continue with their most harrowing combat encounter so far. (But we leveled up afterward, so yay~)

The first part

The previous part.

Our stop-over at Absalom Station was rather uneventful. Captain Arvin gave us a little more pocket change, and we set out shopping again. I felt mostly satisfied with my current kit, since I’d so far used little more than a few charges from the batteries in my and my Drone’s laspistols, but the healing potion Vemir has used on Sixer back on the Eoxian ship had impressed me enough to want to obtain a few for myself. That turned out to be a very wise investment, but I’m getting ahead of myself. It was a little awkward to go looking for a vendor of magic items when up to this point in my life I’d been strictly interested in technology, but I managed to get my hands on three basic healing serums without making too big a fool of myself.

Sixer went looking for some better armor. Vemir cashed in his bounty for the Eoxian power core, picked up a new job hunting down some pirate, and then joined Sixer in the search for better armor. In the end, Vemir decided that nothing that was available in his price range was worth losing his Second Skin’s upgrade potential, but Sixer found something better than his old outfit.

The next day, Venture Captain Arvin gave us the run-down on what little was known about the planet Ulmarid. A long time ago, the planet’s two moons had collided and created a kind of shell of asteroids orbiting around the entire planet. Ulmarid itself was a wasteland, whether naturally or thanks to the fallout of the moons colliding, with weather patterns described as “a potential issue” but it at least had a breathable atmosphere. Not much was known for certain, which is definitely why the Unbounded Wayfarer had been going there in the first place.

Since the Starfinders were hoping this was going to be a rescue mission, Captain Arvin provided us with a different, larger ship than the Loreseeker. The Odyssey was a transport ship: it had a larger crew capacity and better shields than our other craft, but lacked weapons for its port and starboard arcs and no onboard workshops of any kind. I was mildly put out by the lack of a tech workshop to tinker around in during the flight and made a weak attempt to argue that the Loreseeker’s smaller size would give it a better chance of navigating through Ulmarid’s asteroid layer, but the need for space to carry the Wayfarer crew outweighed my desire for the familiar. At the least, ship’s captain Manson Navasi and science android Iseph were going to join us on the Odyssey.

We made it though the Drift to Ulmarid without incident. That was our last piece of luck. Vemir wasn’t as capable with the Odyssey’s lesser maneuverability compared to the Loreseeker, and nearly wiped out half our shields with asteroid collisions. After the second bump, I kindly pointed out that the idea was to go around the rocks, not through them. Vemir snapped at me to do my job of recharging the shields (which I gladly got started on once the bumper-boat ride ended), and finally got us through the asteroids. Iseph scanned the planet for the Unbounded Wayfarer, but could only narrow its location down to a thirty-mile radius of desert.

Time for the three of us to take a hike.

The section of Ulmarid we set down on was a desert of sand broken up occasionally by great jagged rocks. The air was breathable, but there was a strange metallic taste to it which lent the otherwise normal-looking environment an uncanny atmosphere. The sky was clear and nothing seemed to be moving, but we could all sense something wasn’t quite right. We began our hike with trepidation.

After crossing a few dunes, the tension finally broke when a great storm rose out of nowhere. What started hitting us wasn’t rain or a sandstorm, though, it was a hail of sharp crystal shards that simply screamed “we’re poisonous.” With a bit of constant vigilance, weaving steps, and a lot of faith in the toughness of my helmet and thickness of my fur, I managed to avoid any actual cuts from the crystals, but Sixer and Vemir weren’t so lucky. The android’s non-organic nature let him shrug off the poisonous effects of the crystals, but they still sliced him up a little. Vemir also got a lot of cuts and had to resort to trying one of the anti-toxin bulbs we’d been given by the Vat Farm’s owner. It seemed to do the trick, as Vemir made a quick recovery once the storm passed. The metallic taste of the air went with the passing of the crystal hail, which was both a relief and a good bit of weather lore to keep in mind: seek cover when the air starts tasting like metal.

After more hiking, we came upon the wreck of a ship half-buried in the sand. From what we could see of the ship’s profile, we determined that it was definitely the Unbounded Wafarer, and we picked up the pace. As we got nearer, Sixer suddenly sensed movement coming from below the sands and warned us just in time to avoid getting immediately munched by what looked like a screw-off big worm with an eat-you-in-one-bite mouth full of teeth and covered in a bunch of the poison crystals. Vemir dodged left toward a large piece of wreckage while my Drone and I went right toward a different, smaller bit while I tried to chuck a grenade into the worm’s mouth. The ‘nade bounced off he top of the worm’s head and exploded harmlessly in the air. The worm was smart enough to figure out who was responsible for that indignity and lunged at me, failing to eat me but leaving me with a rather painful bite. Vemir tried to shoot the worm, but his shots either went wide or did nothing. My Drone landed a laser shot that actually hurt the thing and pulled its attention away from me. While I certainly appreciated the Drone’s ability to use a laspistol, I hadn’t yet grown so attached to it that I’d begrudge having to build a new one should it get eaten, so I told the Drone to keep shooting while I slipped around the worm and booked it for Vemir’s position.

While this was happening, Sixer noticed something on the hull of the Wayfarer: an antipersonnel plasma turret that looked like it was still in working order. He booked it over there and quickly determined that although the ammo feed was a bit borked, the turret had usable rounds loaded. He climbed into the manual control seat and fired into the worm’s back just as it managed to get its teeth into my Drone. The plasma hurt the worm so badly that it dropped my Drone and screamed. I lobbed another grenade, hoping to take advantage of the creature’s vulnerability, but the ‘nade just sent up a cloud of sand next to the worm. The explosion did startle the beast, at least, and it dove beneath the sand. Vemir and I were almost starting to think it had been driven off, when it suddenly erupted from right under Vemir’s feet. Evidently it had decided to go for cover, and chose our bit of wreckage to hide behind. As the worm re-emerged, I saw that it actually wasn’t exactly a worm: it had legs. Six of them. The monster let out a shriek that nearly split my skull and gave Vemir a bite that nearly ended the Kasantha’s life.

It was painfully obvious that nothing Vemir or I had on hand was going to do much of worth to the oversized worm-bug, so we both decided to just make a break for the Wayfarer and lure the beast out of cover so Sixer could shoot it with the turret. Vemir staggered a little at first as he tried to drink a healing serum and run at the same time, while I focused just on running and scrambled up on the back end of the wing that Sixer’s turret was mounted on. We both made it to the ship before the beast could catch either of us. As we ran, my much-abused but single-minded Drone did its best to keep pelting the worm with lasers despite its gun mount being bent out of alignment. Sixer’s second and third shots just barely missed the charging worm, and the beast decided that stopping the thing that had actually hurt it would be a good idea.

Before Sixer could fire again, the worm wrapped its mouth around the side of the turret and bit down hard, and it was only thanks to it attacking the turret as a whole that Sixer survived, although he was knocked out. While I panic-fired uselessly from my perch (although I somehow managed to take one of its legs off), Vemir had the presence of mind to climb up to the turret as the worm reared back in preparation for another lunge, shoved Sixer’s unconscious form out of the control seat, and spun the turret just in time to fire a plasma bolt straight down the beast’s throat. The explosion was messy and underwhelming considering the mass involved, and it scattered crystals everywhere, but I was just glad to be alive.

Vemir used the last of his healing serums to patch himself up and get Sixer back on his feet while I took one of my own, and we all took a moment to collect a bunch of the crystals from the worm’s corpse, just in case they had some sort of value, before finally heading inside the Unbounded Wayfarer.

We’d come with the hope of finding survivors, but all we found were corpses. Aside from seven bodies of the crew members, the ship was completely empty, looted by the Corpse Fleet (who, if you recall, had been sacked by pirates before we’d found them). There was almost no power left in the ship’s core, just enough to operate the turret and run one of the computers for a few minutes. I managed to extract some of the last logs, confirming the fate of the ship’s people and cargo, and a short list of planets and other curiosities the crew had investigated before coming to Ulmarid. By using one of the crew insignias we’d brought along on Captain Arvin’s suggestion, I unlocked a compartment containing a strange, iridescent stone made of some compounds I had never seen before and which might have something magical about it.

We commed Captain Navasi to report. He was distraught to learn that there were no survivors and asked us to bring as many of the remains back as we could. Having no desire to hike another thirty miles dragging a corpse behind me and risk running into another of those monstrous worm-bugs, I transmitted our exact location and told Navasi to come to us if he wanted to collect his comrades’ remains. He admitted that was a much better idea, especially after I described the monster that had nearly eaten all three of us and turned my Drone into a chew toy. It was solemn work putting all the corpses into body bags, and none of us had the energy to ask if those seven bodies accounted for the Wayfarer’s whole crew nor to speculate what our next move should be.

On the one hand, I was all for going back to Absalom Station again where I could get access to an actual workshop for giving my Drone a few tweaks and myself a chance to experiment on some of the stuff we found. But on the other hand, there was a chance that Captain Arvin would declare our mission complete, give us the rest of our pay, and send us each on our separate way. I’m not sure what Vemir and Six would have thought about that; Vemir’s been coldly professional about the job and Six doesn’t talk much, but I realized I’d started to become comfortable with their presence and unsure of what I would do without them continuing to be at my back.

#Starfinder #ski'tar #Vulpin plays

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jonathanraychapman · 6 years ago

Text

Remembering Ultima Online

When I was in junior college (I spent two years at the local community college before the state university), I used to hang out over at a friend’s house This was someone I met in high school. He and his other friends had started to play Ultima Online on his new Gateway 2000. I didn’t really have any close friends growing up (especially not ones that could come over) so this was sort of a new era in my life (where being social was a possibility). Before that, I tended to read and play PC games by myself - cut off from the rest of the world and completely offline.

By that time I was already an established PC gamer (but not with deep knowledge of games) since my mom bought me a IBM compatible one of her coworkers had built - probably when I was 12 (complete with dual 5.25-inch floppy drives). We weren’t rich by any stretch of the imagination and my first PC was really the second-hand cast-off from her coworker - who had upgraded as an enthusiast. I became an hobbyist myself and my birthday money and part-time job earnings quickly went into new rigs. By the time I entered college, I had scrounged and bought a AMD 300 Mhz K6-2 with a 8mb Matrox Millennium graphics card and probably 16mb of memory. I mostly just played older games (by that point) like Quake and Doom.

Meanwhile - across the road from my parent’s house - they had built a new Walmart supercenter with its own software section (which was kind of amazing since our whole town had less than 1800 people). Instead of driving over an hour away to get PC games at the mall (at a Babbages) or borrow a physical copy from someone at school, I had access right there to somewhat-modern games and magazines about them (specifically magazines with demos).

The first RPG game I bought over there (my first RPG games were the Gold Box TSR/SSI games) was Ultima IX: Ascension. It was a really poor purchase and it ran terribly on my rig (which I’ve read was probably for pretty much everyone). At this point I wasn’t nostalgic for Ultima because I hadn’t really played it so I returned it. Walmart didn’t even want to take it back because of it having been opened - though eventually we worked that out (it was defective in my eyes). I hadn’t yet caught the Diablo 2 bug and so when my friends suggested I go back over there and buy the new Ultima Online (the same series as the game I had just returned) I was a bit skeptical - especially because we didn’t even have dial-up internet at the time.

But after sitting over at my friend’s house and seeing how this game (Ultima Online Second Age) played out for him, I was hooked. It also helped that that midi sound from this game was just amazing in this game (just the character creation screen was awesome). And the lack of Internet at my house wasn’t really a problem either as it turned out. Though it might have been a bit unethical, a phone number and password was passed around between friends and that became my internet access as well. The fact it was 56K modem (and probably less than that given the copper wiring in the house and poles) wasn’t really an issue since this game was simple as far as controls and graphics. But the internet was bad to just cut out at times - leading to many in-game deaths (and heart-stopping moments).

Certainly for such a primitive-looking game, the imagination greatly assisted in making Ultima Online an immersive experience. When it was 2am in the morning, having your newbie account being attacked by a bear or an Orc Mage would put you on edge (heart racing as you tried everything to win or run away).

This game also introduced me to this pattern (especially with MMOs.. Everquest, Star Wars, etc) that carried on through my college years of friends getting me into a game, but at a point where they were much too high level or too aloof to play with me. So I really ended up playing Ultima Online alone instead of it being the group experience I had hoped for. I was still having a good time playing it, but it was just so hard to coordinate with local players at that time in my life that I decided to just not try to. After all, I was using the only form of outside communication in the house as my conduit into the Internet. There were no cell phones at that time for us. If you needed to call someone, you had to sign off of the modem and get back a dial-tone to call them on the landline. And, if you wanted to reach them at home, they also had to not be using their phone line for Internet or you’d just get a busy signal. We had ICQ at that time, but it only helped so much (both parties had to be online for example).

I spent most of my time in this game leveling up and wandering the coastline above town. I went around, finding reagents and using them to practice spellcraft. This was all made harder by being killed by NPCs (Orc Mages were notorious), bears, and then there were the worst - PK’ers (Player-Killers).

A little aside about PK’ing. If everything was well and good and fair, this wouldn’t be so bad, but in Ultima Online, these villains were quite the scourge on the aspiring newcomer. First of all, you had to run all the way back to town to be resurrected if there was no good player around to resurrect you. When you died, your items would all remain on your body (at this point you were a ghost). The PK’er could loot your body for any items they wanted - leaving your body to rot. This meant that by the time you got back to your body, your items were probably gone (evaporated into the digital ether). But not only that; the PK’er might just be hidden nearby and they might murder you a second-time - using your body as the bait to bring you back. PK’ers were the ultimate trolls in this game - getting their fun by causing you misery. Sometimes players (especially new players) would just give up on the game altogether because of this. Now if you were close to a town, you could call out GUARD and if there was a guard in proximity they would show up and pretty much immediately execute the PK’er. I can assure you that this never happened. These killers were experienced in the game and would never position themselves close enough for that to occur.

Eventually - while out in the middle of nowhere - I found a kind, trusting stranger that let me have a key to her house (and access to her food) so I could work on crafting and not lose everything - just the items on my person - when I died. I only played this character so eventually I became pretty powerful as a wizard (I believe my spells and swordsmanship were both above 90/100). Typically my style was to cast spells and run back (which eventually was termed ‘kiting’) while wearing little or no armor (just a helmet and a robe) to recover mana. After casting spells, I’d equip a halberd to deliver the final blow. Over time I had to travel to dungeons and fight higher-level monsters to even gain anything stat-wise.

I had joined my friend’s guild - even though I didn’t hang out with them most of the time - given how difficult it was to arrange. Joining up was more out of friendship than any advantage. And - by that point - I was every bit their equals as far as combat (though we had went different tracts). By that point, I had even defended myself against some PK’ers by that time (using their own techniques against them - given that my play style was the same as theirs - nuking with spells, running, repeating, and then delivering the kill blows with a halberd). I was happy that the guild i joined had bought a house at that time and my friend was a pretty good blacksmith (actually smithing was how he raised funds) so that was also a perk. But neither perk was really great for me. I spent most of the time away in dungeons or storing my loot at that lady’s house that I had met earlier.

So - to continue my story - one rainy afternoon (IRL) I get a phone call. It’s my friend and he and his guild needed my help online in the game (which it was my duty to provide given our affiliation). The plot?.. Well enough is enough and they’re going to raid a guild of player-killers up the path a ways from Britain. I certainly needed no more motivation. Given my previous difficulties, I was absolutely livid about these jerks in my game. He wants everyone to meet up at the guild-house (right outside the edge of the city limits) and then we’d ride up there together to attack. I didn’t have a horse (given that I just usually teleport or walk everywhere), but he says he’s got one for me to borrow. So at that point I’m in.

The four of us talk strategy in chat. My friend - the leader - is playing a traditional fighter/tank character (with a high/maxed healing skill - using bandages to recover HP on himself and others). He’s done some reconnaissance beforehand. The evil guild up north has been positioned by the roadside and has been hiding and then waylaying travelers - looting all their items (but really just murdering newbies for lulz). The gang is filled with real, logged-in players who use alt accounts to keep themselves supplied - as the game won’t let you come to town as a murderer. They’re well outside of town limits, so calling guards is no use up there. And the gang uses a local house to run back and hide in if there’s trouble. The game won’t let people rush in their house if they’ve locked the door. On top of that, they can banish you from their house by typing and then selecting your sprite. You’re immediately transported outside and can not enter again or approach the step (kind of like legends about vampires - only you’re the vampire here with the invisible barrier preventing entry).

Given these villains are traditional PK’ers (already leveled-up characters with a certain skillset used for murder), they are attired and skilled much like myself - with little armor and with a heavy polearm (relying on magic to quickly take down enemies before being hurt). Their hit-and-run tactics works well-enough normally - against single travelers - but against four adventurers on horses they need their spells to do massive damage to have a chance. All together we launch an assault out of nowhere, riding up there on horseback. Though they're hidden (waiting for new targets, hidden among the skeletons of the newly-killed on the roadside), this assault catches them off-guard and, in the end, there are only two of them logged on at the time. They initially break their cover with the hopes of winning before realizing they’re outnumbered. They attempt to run and hide, but I reveal them with the namesake spell - letting the others continue the assault.

Again they fall back and blast some spells in retaliation, but it’s no use. We overpower them - using healing to tank the damage while disrupting their spell-casting by attacking and the PK’ers are soon out of mana. On top of that, from the back-line I hit them with a energy bolt as they run. This is where things get interesting. In a fit of panic, one runs into their nearby house as he’s pursued. My friend rushes right in after him. This takes away his option of locking the door. As he’s probably typing in the command to banish a player (which is fairly quick to accomplish), my friend strikes him dead inside the doorway.

So - after we finish the pursuit - there we are - inside the bandit house with an unlocked door - with no-one alive now to banish us outside. And it gets better. Normally in the game you can lock down items so that no-one can remove them from your house. These players hadn’t done that (because they relied on the locked door). So it’s a veritable cave of wonders in there with everything for the taking. And apparently this PK’er’s alt account is a grandmaster blacksmith and he stores his extra goods in the house (to share with his accounts and guildmates). When you’re a grandmaster blacksmith in this game, your name is visible in text on the armor and swords you make. So pretty soon we’re all stocked up with the guy’s armor and weapons (I believe I took some armor made from a green-colored ore). I’d taken all the stored food and spell reagents I could find. There wasn’t any gold in there (because they kept that in the bank), but anything that wasn’t nailed down (sitting in chests) we took.

There’s no downside here (not even a moral one). After all, looting the body of a murderer is allowed without karma loss. There’s also no karma loss for picking up items out of chests. The PK’er is probably a ghost there, screaming at us to no avail. He can’t get resurrected with that login in town because he’s a murderer. He could log in with his alt account, but that takes time. It’s over and we’ve won. Later, we spotted the alt account near the bank in town (because it was the name on the armor). Whenever we’d see that guy, we’d always go over and thank him for the awesome armor we had on (the joke being that he hadn’t exactly given it to us). He’d just leave town or type something that the game would mask as gibberish (i.e. curse-words).

So this was one of my more-fun adventures (and really my only adventure with my local friends and their guild) and really the beginning of the end for me playing it. Shortly after this we all went our separate ways. I continued my schooling elsewhere, found Diablo 2 (and the expansions), and lost many many hours playing that game online. Maybe I’ll write about our Neverwinter Nights adventures some other time.

#ultima online

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forthelulzy · 7 years ago

Text

But My Aching Soul

Filled a @dapromptexchange prompt.

Rating: M

Warnings: Major and Minor Character Death.

Words: 2,365

Summary:

He used to sit on the porch and pen letters, bent over an upended fire log for his table instead of the perfectly serviceable writing desk inside. Letters, only a few of which would ever be sent.

Many years after retiring to the countryside, Hawke gets sick, and Fenris deals with the inevitable reality of being alone again.

Read on AO3

We had a little cottage, high in the Fereldan hill-lands, far from anywhere of note but close to our hearts.

He used to say if he squinted from the porch on a clear autumn afternoon, he could see the village where he’d stayed two glorious months, him and Carver and Bethany and their mother and their father. We went, a few times for a few reasons, but like so many things it had been destroyed in the Blight and rebuilt unrecognizable. The people did not know him, more salt than pepper, still-strong hands around his ‘walking stick’, and he said many times that he wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

They recognized me, and I had no such qualm. We did not need them, I said, and that was that.

He and I built the cottage ourselves, with some help from Aveline — dear Aveline! She was gone too soon after — and even years later he would mumble into his beard about the crooked mantel that she put in. I never had the heart to tell him that it was me. It was his way of remembering her fondly, the big sister after losing the little one, both taken with none of the dignity they deserved.

A gentle home for two old fighters, with sturdy walls supporting a roof that never leaked, not once. Quilts everywhere, gifts from Merrill that we were grateful for on winter nights, even if the early attempts were… unconventional. As the years passed her skill, and our collection, only grew.

He used to sit on the porch and pen letters, bent over an upended fire log for his table instead of the perfectly serviceable writing desk inside. Letters, only a few of which would ever be sent. Quill to inkpot to paper, pause to chew on the nib, start again. Letters, to his friends and his enemies and people he’d never met. Though I had read every book I had ever gotten my hands on since he taught me, and I knew he wouldn’t care if I read one or all of them, I let them be. Sometimes he would look up at me, though, to where I sat at his side, as always, and though I was reading or mending a hole in a quilt or staring off into the distance sipping my tea, I would feel his gaze fall on me, and soften.

And he would ask me. Ask me what? What word he was looking for, if this word meant what he thought it meant, if that phrase was ‘too Fereldan’. If he needed a spelling, I’d bring down the well-thumbed dictionary and show him that yes, it was really a silent T, and we’d roll our eyes at Orlesians.

I didn’t have to read the letters to know they held his grudges, his fears, his hopes, and his passion in every penstroke. I could see it, just in his face as he tapped the quill against his chin. The beard would grow bushier as his hairline receded, but it was the same gesture across the years until he didn’t make it anymore. This was his, his catharsis and his ritual against a world that had tried to take everything from him.

The letters, those never to be sent, were carefully labeled and stored away. Boxes and boxes of letters, neatly left to gather dust. Most addressees shared their boxes, as most addressees got one letter and never more. Those close to his heart each had a box all to themselves, their piles growing across the years as he worked out his hate, regret and love. His family, his friends. Meredith who got his pity by the end, Trevelyan who got his respect, and Alistair who got nothing but had given him the most precious gift: time.

And me.

When the news came of Aveline — of the rock thrown as she took off her helmet to better address the crowd, not as an authority to struggle against but as a fellow Kirkwaller who had dreams, aspirations, a family — we held each other as we cried, and the next morning he wrote his last letter to her. I found him, standing out in the dew-laced field next to the little hole he had dug for Aveline’s box of letters, shivering in the pre-dawn chill as he drew the earth over the grave with magic. I watched him from the porch until the sun rose from behind the far hills, watched his shoulders heave and shake and then settle. When the rooster started crowing, he turned and came back to the house, to me.

We did not speak.

It was over a decade after that Isabela was lost to the sea, and that night we drank in her honor and that morning I woke with a raging hangover to empty space in our bed and knew what he was doing. I could even imagine what he had written in that final letter, for I felt it too. Of all of us, I’m sure she would find her own death most fitting.

Then Sebastian caught some wasting sickness while on diplomacy in Antiva and slowly dwindled down to dust, leaving no heirs and sending Starkhaven into another civil war. He had never liked Sebastian as well as I had, but he stayed up all night with me as I wrote my own letter, this one to go into the box with his. He let me pile the dirt over the box with my own hands, and I will always be grateful for the feeling of earth under my palms, burying my regrets symbolically, even as halfway across the known world my best friend was ashes in an urn.

Time passed quickly and quietly. Around the time Merrill’s yearly quilt arrived, her largest one yet and themed after the legendary golden halla of her people, I found him wrapped in it, and a dozen others, complaining of the cold though it was a balmy spring day, unseasonably warm. I trundled him off to bed, force-fed him tasteless but hot broth. I knew he would be fine when he had the energy to complain about it.

But after that he wasn’t quite the same. He caught colds more often. Even in the height of summer, he got one, sneezing into a handkerchief three times and blaming it on allergies he had never had. He took longer and longer to fetch water, and claimed he was ‘sightseeing’. He would hold me at night, but rarely more than that, promising ‘tomorrow’.

When his hands began to shake, I knew. When he knocked over his inkwell and burst into hysterics as ink blotted out his carefully crafted letter to Varric, I held him. Because he knew too.

Anders’ box we never buried, for we could never know which rumors were true. We heard a dozen times that he had been executed, and heard he had been spotted in a border town somewhere a dozen more after that. Truthfully, the world will likely never know what became of him after Hawke let him go. Anders probably died in a dank cave somewhere, alone and forgotten but for his legend, not himself, bones picked over for carrion. The thought… I do not know what to make of it. Or he reinvented himself, perhaps in Tevinter as he always wanted — except… except I know he did not actually want that — and let his old self pass into myth even as he continued on. I don’t know what to make of that thought, either.

He grew worse. I did not take him into town. I did not send for a healer. Is that selfish? I did not want them to see him as a doddering old man, did not want them to poke and prod and declare what we already knew: that there was nothing to be done. Because I knew that, to hear it aloud, that I would break. He was all the light and joy I had. He was all the reasons I had. Is that selfish, that I wanted to keep him to myself for the last precious time we had together?

He knew that, as his body was failing and had failed, that his mind would go too. He was no storyteller, he told me and kept telling me, but someone had to keep these memories. I think he was even then somewhat fading, but I dutifully did what I had not done before: I wrote his letters for him. Sat by his side of the bed, or at the writing desk as he dictated from the armchair, and wrote the letters with the emotions broken free from their cages by his failing health. To Bartrand, to his cousin Solona, to Feynriel — all people long dead but whose ghosts still haunted him. He even wrote to Knight-Captain Cullen — who, it was said, had retired to the countryside with Inquisitor Trevelyan and didn’t live all that far away — saying that only the Maker could offer absolution but he could offer forgiveness. He said to send it when he was gone.

And to Merrill and Varric, he spoke until my hand could barely hold the quill anymore. To them he sent his boundless love. To them he sent his memories of them, and his wishes for their happiness.

And then there were the things he left only for me. These he did not dictate, but shared into the darkness of our bedroom long into the night. I held his hand, fragile as a newborn bird, under the covers as he whispered memory after memory. I did not need the words to know he loved me, but these he said too. Could I survive, without this man beside me?

One night as we lay abed, like so many nights before, he told me about the village on the far hill, and his family in the last months they would be whole. Good memories, happy memories. His father, so tall and strong and proud. So like himself, just in a bygone time. He turned out a lot like his father, he mused to me, but he held an anguish in him that did not come from something forever lost.

I love you, he said. Good night, we said, as we had so many nights before.

I knew, before I opened my eyes, that he was gone.

He was smiling in the eternal sleep, peaceful and somehow so full of promise that it would be all right. I brushed his cheek one last time, and got up.

Already the house was so empty. I dressed, joints creaking, and stepped out onto the porch.

“He’s gone, then?”

It was Merrill, perched on the swing, legs drawn up under her chin. She aged, too, though I hadn’t seen her in many years. Her hair was longer, and white, but the layers of wrinkles couldn’t hide the vallaslin, nor could cataracts completely cover her sparkling eyes. Her head peeked out from over a cacophony of colorful wool scarves.

I nodded, too tired to be properly surprised.

She turned her head from me, watching the sky. “I’ll help you with the pyre, if you need it,” she offered, though her voice trembled. Perhaps looking away helped her, too.

“Thank you.”

She uncurled, and followed me into the house. Neither of us were strong enough alone, though he was half the weight he was when we had met. Together we managed to wrap him in linen, and carry him to the field. Though I did not tell her, she led us to the unmarked, open area where we had buried the letters. On rough dirt where nothing grew, we laid him down.

Merrill looked at me, then across the rolling hills through the misty morning haze at something only she could see. My throat would not open. She held out her hands.

As the fire engulfed him, my love, my everything, Merrill opened her mouth and sang.

And I felt, in that lament in a language I had never bothered to learn, all the years at once. My years, his years, our years, and the eons gone by unremarked. It came, with a crushing oneness and a gentle sigh. It bore me down into the soft dirt, cradled me like a lover as I gasped out my soul, wailed at the incomprehensible solitude of carrying on. Still the song poured out of her, and the flames. I screamed, I wept, I raged against the unfairness of it all. I was alone.

“You should know,” she said, walking back. “I was visiting Varric a week ago. He’s gone, Fenris. Dropped dead one day with no warning. I rode as fast as I could to beat the courier, but it…” She trailed off as I opened the door and walked inside, leaving it open for her to do whatever she pleased. Did it matter, anymore?

She looked around the house, at our comfortable clutter. At the various knickknacks gifted to us over the years by our friends. A mermaid figurine. A crooked mantel. Quilts. I sank into his armchair, the one closest to the fireplace, and thumbed the golden halla’s antlers. Merrill, ever restless even in old age, puttered about. I let her be.

Until she found the letters.

“What are these?” she said, holding up Varric’s box. I glanced over and started, having forgotten about them.

“Those—”

“Oh, this one is yours!” she exclaimed. She put down Varric’s box and picked up mine, looking at it from all angles. “Oh, it’s got a note on it.”

“Give that to me,” I snarled, getting up as fast as my joints would allow and grabbing it out of her hands. The note, pinned to the top, fluttered. I looked down at it, read it, only dimly aware of Merrill looking over my shoulder.

“Oh, da’len,” she breathed.

Fenris,

I know I will someday leave you. I will leave you as my father left my mother, as Bethany left Carver, as my mother left me…

That last night, I had thought it grief for his long-dead father in his voice, in his eyes.

I know better now.

#fenhawke #da2 #dragon age fanfiction #fenris #hawke #merrill #cw: death #lulzy writes

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lormeus · 7 years ago

Text

The Imperator’s Executioner

Dearest Tribune Namaraen, At one of the local villages west of the Woods, there has been talk of villagers losing personal items, and even livestock to rebellious bandits. I know this task is something that must at first have gotten you to wonder why it is that I wrote to you of all people. Luckily, a trusted source told me that the leader of this growing Mafia used to run beneath my father’s banner when he once held the Patriarchy to House Ven’torum. It seems as if they are selling and trading the goods they have stolen from those around them, and have been using their currency to purchase weapons. This would not have been as interesting nor curious if days after those weapons were purchased, a body trail has been found scattered among Silvermoon. Trails of high class Nobles, and even a few family members. I wrote to you in hopes of you finding, and finishing this ordeal once and for all. Be careful, Lormeus. These are dangerous people who reside beneath the, ‘Crimson Mafia.’ May the Eternal Sun bless you. Blessings, Imperator Phaeith Bella’viere Ven’torum, Matriarch of House Ven’torum

“Your will, my hands.” The Tribune said aloud after reading the letter he had received from the Imperator. He turned the letter over and then folded it back up, knowing there was nothing remaining on the parchment to read. He slid it into one of the few hidden compartments of his simple looking desk before standing up to go and don his armor.

-----

Later that day, Lormeus had rode out from the Ven’torum estate lodgings he was give with his goal in mind. Atop the trusted Dragonhawk he had taken into battle more than a dozen times. He sailed into the air, his dark red armor seeming to absorb the light that shone from the fading sun as day turned to dusk. His left hand on the reins and his right holding his favored spear out to the side.

It took him only half an hour of flight to reach the area she had detailed for him to find, knowing that flying any further would give him away he decided to land. The Dragonhawk veered down and soared to the ground in a fast descent, its profile lost in the canopy of the trees. It landed in the cradle like top of one of the bigger trees and allowed Lormeus to dismount.

Lormeus pulled an a bit of food for the beast out of the saddlebags and fed it. Running a hand along its snout to relax it from the quick ride and heavy load. “Stay here old friend.” He said in a hushed tone. “I’ll be back.” Whether he was promising the Dragonhawk or himself, he was not too sure. However, he did not let such things make him falter in his step. He stepped towards the egde of the tree and dropped down off the side to begin his hunt.

-----

Night had fallen, and so Lormeus used the cover of darkness to hunt for the camp of this supposed Mafia that preyed on the weak off of the roads. Everything about the foe made him disgusted with their very existence. By his oaths to the Kingdom, the Imperator and to the Light, he would not suffer them any longer. As he seethed in his discontent, he spotted a few dim fires deeper into the woods.

Following the unintentional beacons he came upon their camp, quickly ducking behind a tree before a sentry spotted him. He slowly slid down and crouched behind some thick brush. He kept his spear in his right hand on the ground and set his left hand on the nearby tree to keep himself steady.

He slowly crept his head up and peaked over the brush to count the enemy contingent. Four sentries, that alone spoke to at least another twelve in the camp if they dedicated so many to keep the perimeter. He observed the sentries all holding finely crafted Dwarven rifles, a particular oddity. A deadly one even for one in full plate.

He could take them out and then move through the camp and try to avoid detection as best he could, but they would no doubt have a guard change. Likely starting with the one near the front of the camp, being the most integral. He chewed on his lip in thought, debating his best course of action. He looked down to his spear and then back to the man near the front of the camp. A hum of thought resonating from him.

-----

The camp had gone quiet, the moon full and at its apex in the sky over the camp. Illuminating the now dark camp. Most having gone to bed, but guard change had come around. From within the camp a few men stirred in their tents, coming out to walk their paths to their sentry posts. Hushed callouts came from the East, West and North sides having been the flanks of the camp.

The man bound for the main entrance of the camp didn’t see any reason to call out to his comrade to find him. He was standing guard under the moonshade of one of the trees, his rifle close to his chest. His friend was probably cold, a good thing he was being relieved. As the new guard approached within five feet, he slowed to a stop, his friend wasn’t moving. At all. Not even breathing it seemed.

“Arthaniel, you alright?” The man said to the guard quietly, coming a little closer. “You didn’t fall asleep standing up did y-.”

A shining silver blade with a few lines of green running along its length. A hand cupped over the man’s mouth as he squirmed and was eased down to the ground. He was laid on his side and a figure stood over him, a man in armor with a gleaming sword. Lormeus had made his move. He turned to the standing up man and moved around to his front. He had propped him up with his spear, the sharp end piercing the ground and the spiked pommel pushing him up right through his chest.

He cut the rope binding the rifle to his chest and unloaded it, then cleared it. Tossing it then into the brush where he had stashed the others from the other guards. He was hoping the rest didn’t have their own rifles, otherwise it was still going to be a hard fight. He counted tents enough for at most, twenty men. Meaning he theoretically had to count on their being at least fifteen others within the camp to dispose of.

He nodded to himself, ready to carry out the remainder of his mission. He gripped the spear and pulled it up from the ground and then out of his enemy’s chest. The body slumped and fell onto the other one from a solid kick to the chest to make it so. The sound muffled enough to not carry too far. He could see the three other men who were trying to rotate, coming back to the camp in a hurry.

Lormeus sprang to action, hoping he could stop them from alerting the others and that his running didn’t wake any of them. He leapt over a fallen log and closed in on the first who then turned from hearing him coming. He started to yell as Lormeus closed in. “Intrude-!” He bellowed the beginning of the warning before a spear was shoved into his open mouth and pierced through the back of his neck.

The Tribune forced him down to his knees and pressed his boot to his chest, then shoved him off of the spear. With a quick flick, blood splattered the ground as it fell from the spear. He looked towards where he had seen the second sentry last, but it was then he realized he was too late. The warning had gotten through.

Men rushed from their tents as the others relayed the warnings, lanterns flaring to life, swords hissing as they left their sheathes. He couldn’t be faulted for trying to take the stealthier route, but it indeed had failed. He turned to the camp and planned his path through the area to meet the rest head on. They all began to stream in his direction in their night clothes, unarmored. Most armed with swords, but a few seemed to have mauls as well, the only true threat to him.

He would prioritize them as he could. He sprinted forward, the small mob of men rushing towards him. Within seconds he was within range of the first man charging sword in hand. He thrusted his spear forward into the man’s chest, and then ripped it back out. Sliding against the gravel beneath his feet, small clouds of dust being kicked up.

He spun around the first and slashed the head of his spear across the neck of the second. Blood spewed forth from the wound and he fell over from the smack the came with the follow through punch to the head from Lormeus. The third came, wildly slashing at him. He stepped back once, twice and then dashed into his guard, slamming his forehead against the man’s head. The adamantite helmet cracking the man’s skull with the forceful impact.

The fourth and fifth came together, seeing that solo combat was not something they would win with this man.One swung his maul at Lormeus while the other came from his flank and slashed at him. Causing him to move to his unattacked flank, but this allowed him to get enough room to cock his spear back. He thrusted it forward at the sword wielder, but before he could free his weapon from the man, his comrade slammed the maul into the shaft of the spear. The metal vibrated and transferred enough kinetic energy to cause Lormeus to release his grip.

He rolled backwards and came back up quickly. His hand moved to his sheathed short sword on his hip and pulled it from its ornate scabbard. The metal sang and seemingly whispered in the gentle breeze of the summer night, the light of the moon catching its fine edge and making it appear like it was sparkling. He held the blade in his right hand and balled his left fist, moving quickly forward once again.

He ducked under the swing of the heavy maul and sliced the man just above both knees in two quick strokes. Causing him to stagger back and give Lormeus an opportunity to recover and drive the blade through his chest. Carrying the motion through and slamming him to the ground.

He stood up, pulling the blade from the corpse and looked to the next group that charged him. He sighed, and let them come, his blade already dripping with blood.

-----

Lormeus stood before a pile of corpses, more than a dozen men all laid one on top of the other, surrounded and supported by dry logs, brush and other flammables. In his left hand was a torch, he stepped forward and slowly paced around the pyre, lighting it at the base. Once it had caught enough, he moved around the camp, igniting tents, boxes and other items of interest to the mafia.

Once everything had been lit, he looked up to check the time of night. By the position of the moon, he reasoned that it would be morning in a couple of hours. Time to head back home. He dropped the torch and pulled his left gauntlet off, bringing two fingers to his lips and whistling sharply for his Dragonhawk.

He slid the glove back on and looked himself over. Seeing now, in the bright illumination of the pyre at his side, his armor was caked thick with blood. Bits of gore sticking to it like little adornments. He grumbled under his breath, complaining to himself about the time it would take to clean up. The Dragonhawk finally arrived, and he mounted once more, flying back home.

-----

Imperator,

Mission success, all hostile entities in the vicinity put to death. Unknown if this was the only element, will keep my eyes on the lookout for any further activity. Will execute any others if found. Faith and honor.

Lormeus Namaraen

Tribune

(Mentions: @scarletlioness)

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Jimmy Stewart and the WW2 Mission That Almost Broke Him

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The sound of the impact is deafening. More than 18,000 feet above the German city of Fürth, the World War II B-24 bomber they call Dixie Flyer has just delivered its full payload onto a German manufacturer, devastating its ability to build military aircrafts and turning the airfield into a scrap heap. But even before making the full turn out of Bavaria, Dixie Flyer’s copilot and the leader of this bombing group, Maj. James Stewart (Jimmy Stewart to his fans), is nearly lifted out of his chair.

That’s because a German shell (or flak) has pierced directly through the center of his B-24 Liberator. The whiplash is so intense that only harnesses keep him in his seat. Still, Stewart rises in the air; pilot Capt. Neil Johnson’s hands are briefly shaken from the controls; and for a moment, the entire plane is consumed with smoke as it violently ascends. When Stewart finally gets his bearings, he’s able to look down and see the hole in the aircraft—the edge of it is inches from his boot. Almost two feet in width, the gap offers a clear view through the plane’s fuselage and straight on to the German landscape below.

There is little time to worry though. The German ground defenses and their .88 shells are rattling the sky with more flak, and out of the corner of his eye, Stewart can see one of his planes, and his crews, also get hit. They’re not so lucky as a wing comes off and the craft falls to the earth. Meanwhile, German Focke-Wulf 190 fighters are beginning to swarm.

Stewart’s 445th Bombing Group only have each other and the tightness of their formation for protection—the Eighth Air Force and RAF fighters that accompanied the mission are spread too thin across the rest of Operation Argument’s ambitious list of targets to help—and they’re a long way from home.

It was the fifth day of the Eighth Air Force’s Big Week in February 1944, and Stewart was on his 10th combat mission in the air as either a group, wing, or squadron leader. This is what he left Hollywood for, circumvented Louis B. Mayer to participate in, and felt a lifetime of obligation to fulfill. It would be his finest moment in the air. It also would be the one that almost broke him.

The Mission of a Lifetime

Long before he entertained the idea of movie stardom, James Maitland Stewart felt the call of military service. In many ways, it was viewed as his birthright. His father’s father, the original James Maitland Stewart, served in the Union Army during the Civil War, participating in the valley campaigns of Shenandoah and serving under Gen. Philip Sheridan and a young officer named George Armstrong Custer. His maternal grandfather was at Gettysburg and Fredericksburg (he would die before “Jimmy” was born). And as a boy in the 1910s, the younger James Stewart would sit on his namesake’s knee, hearing eyewitness accounts about the war that preserved the United States.

Around the same time, young Jim was also receiving German helmets and paraphernalia shipped home by his father Alexander Stewart, who was off in Europe serving in World War I. Jim would use these real mementos of war in the makeshift plays he’d put on at his home in Indiana, Pennsylvania.

Biographer Robert Matzen, who authored the definitive account of Stewart’s World War II years, Mission: Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe, tells us this background had a formative influence on the rest of Stewart’s life and his sense of duty, which he carried with him on the train to Hollywood and then, eventually, on the plane ride out of it.

“All of these things added up into this sort of nexus of ‘I will serve, I have to serve, it’s my duty, it’s my time,’” Matzen says during a Zoom conversation. “And when the time came, he answered the bell. He was so fast out of the gate in the sweepstakes for World War II that he was in the first draft class. He willingly went. It’s not that he enlisted, he was drafted, but he was happy to be drafted. He called it winning the lottery.”

Indeed, Stewart’s then-recent status as a movie star of the 1930s was practically an accident, at least as far as MGM, the studio which held his contract, was concerned. The studio’s top brass viewed Stewart as a possible character actor or background comic talent. But then Frank Capra saw the everyman appeal in Jim’s thin frame and irrepressible earnestness, and cast him in You Can’t Take It with You (1938) and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)—on loan at Columbia Pictures.

Stewart of course positioned himself to have that career, just as he positioned himself to be ready to serve if his country ever needed him. Hence alongside his sense of service and sacrifice, he also carried a passion for flying. And as soon as his movie star bona fides were cemented, he celebrated by flying his personal aircraft, a military trainer, learning his way around the skies.

“There’s so many things to think about up there that you forget things down below,” Stewart told an interviewer in the late 1930s. “Flying is something altogether different from the way I’m earning my living. That’s what I like about it… Flying is sort of a guarantee that life will continue to have variety.”

According to biographer Matzen, it also was a guarantee he’d be ready to serve when the time came.

“Step by step, he set himself up to end up in England in a bomb group,” Matzen says. “One of those steps was taken years before he was drafted, and that was when he became a star in Hollywood and bought a plane that was an army trainer and proceeded to learn to fly and train, and log hours on that plane so that he could be a pilot when the war came. And war seemed inevitable by 1938.”

Stewart even used his off-time to prepare for it. Says Matzen, “He took out a trip to Europe toward the end of ’39 to get the lay of the land because he thought he was going to end up fighting there.”

James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan in the 1930s about to fly in his Stinson Voyager plane. Courtesy of Robert Matzen and the Jay Rubin Collection.

The ‘I’m a Movie Star’ Card

That preparation served Jim well. While he was initially rejected from service in 1940—more than a year before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor—his capability as a flyer, and ability to find a doctor to explain that this 32-year-old man’s unusually thin frame was due to genetics and not ill-health, kept him in line to not only be drafted early but excel in the U.S. Army Air Corps.

“He was deferred in October of 1940 and his father was furious,” says Matzen. “He thought that Jim was in on the deferment for some reason. And Alex called him and chewed him out, and it made the papers that his father chewed him out. But it wasn’t anything. That’s what I think sent Jim back to talk to that doctor and get this letter written that was his carte blanche to get into the military.” That same letter was also the first record Matzen found at the top of Stewart’s military file more than 70 years later. It was the piece of paper which got him into the service and, along with his capability as a flyer, helped him rise all the way to the rank of brigadier general while serving in the Air Force Reserve in the 1950s.

That talent is also how Stewart circumvented the wishes of commanding officers and Louis B. Mayer, who likely applied pressure on the government to keep Stewart stateside during the war, essentially to make propaganda films for the First Motion Picture Unit.

“Jim was furious when that happened, because that was not his intention,” Matzen says. “He was a movie star of the first order who walked away from Hollywood. He took his fame with him and it did allow him to speak to officers that otherwise would not talk to a private and then a corporal, and then a second lieutenant. He got his way by playing the ‘I’m a movie star’ card. But it wasn’t, ‘I’m a movie star, don’t send me in harm’s way.’ It was just the opposite.”

In November 1943, Stewart would get his wish when he was sent to England as part of the 445th Bombardment Group in the Eighth Air Force.

Maj. Stewart circa 1944 waiting for his group to return at the Station 124 control tower in East Anglia. Courtesy of Robert Matzen and the Film Stills Collection, L Tom Perry Special Collections, Brigham Young University.

Squadron Leader

Stewart almost never spoke about his experiences during the war. Just as he would refuse to ever star in a World War II picture, he abjectly refused to give an interview to the press after arriving in Tibenham, a remote and perpetually damp village in East Anglia. His reticence is even the reason Matzen was first wary of writing a book about Stewart’s war experiences. Yet, for whatever personal recalcitrance the actor had toward talking, the story left by his military file, records of his bombing runs, and even the testimonials, diary entries, and occasional published memoirs of the men under his command paint a strong picture.

As the oldest man on the plane and in the air—with his pilots frequently being between ages 19 and 23—Stewart offered a precise and measured authority that made him a natural leader who was too good to keep stateside.

Air Corps officer Beirne Lay Jr. recalled, “Things seemed to go all right when Stewart was up front. He made free use of the radio, like an aerial quarterback, to advise and encourage the other boys during a mission, and here his experience in films gave him a novel advantage. Because of his precise enunciation, people could understand him. It sounds like a little thing, but clear, quick communication between formations was of extraordinary importance.”

The talent made Stewart a natural choice to become a commanding officer in the 445th. Always from the copilot seat of a B-24 Liberator bomber, Stewart would command anywhere between 25 to 150 aircrafts, depending on if he was lead, wing, or squadron commander. But even on the days he didn’t fly with the men he trained, he would brief his boys about the day’s missions. Then came the long wait in the cold mud of Tibenham, below the radio tower of Station 124. Those hours of seeing if all his crews would return felt interminably longer than actually flying the missions.

“He had very few of what they call milk runs,” Matzen says, “which were the easy ones where you hopped over the North Sea to the Netherlands or you hopped over the Channel to the coast of France, and you bombed something easy: a submarine pen here or a gun emplacement there. His very first mission was to Kiel in the very Northern tip of Germany, near Denmark, to bomb submarine pens. It was this long mission east over the North Sea.” It was a clean one on a bright December day, despite encountering countless rounds of flak.

A few weeks later, they would not be so easygoing. On Jan. 7, 1944, Capt. Stewart was wing lead of the 445th when the 389th, the lead bombing group that day, took a wrong turn over the Rhine. The formations had successfully carried out a bombing raid of the German city of Ludwigshafen, but the 389th turned at a mistaken angle that put their return flight on a path over Nazi occupied Paris instead of Tibenham.

Despite the 389th ignoring Stewart’s radio communication, the 35-year-old officer made the even-headed choice to follow the 389th and keep formation tight (as opposed to creating chaos and isolation in the sky), which came in handy after the 389th inevitably became a target of the German Luftwaffe air force outside of Paris.

American Thunderbolts and British Spitfires ended up saving the 389th that day, which still lost several planes and even more lives, but the tight flying of the 445th led the Luftwaffe to not even tangle with Stewart’s group.

It was the mission that earned Jim the rank of major. His confidence grew, yet day by day, and mission by mission, the stress likewise increased as he saw fewer faces he trained return home. For instance, on one mission, Stewart’s aircraft suffered engine troubles while crossing the English Channel and had to return home. The plane that took their place in the formation as group leader, the Liberty Belle, was shot down in their place. Only three parachutes were spotted getting out in time.

Similarly, Jim was at the barracks in December 1943 when they celebrated the 22nd birthday of his pilot Dave Skjeje. In February, he was writing to Billie, Dave’s widow of the same age, about how her newlywed husband died.

“He was told don’t get personally involved,” Matzen says. “There is a hierarchy here and he stuck to that pretty well, but he also was the one to write the letters to families, to wives, to mothers and fathers when somebody was lost, and it really weighed on him.”

It would soon reach a tipping point.

Jim Stewart and the crew of the B-24 Liberator called Lady Shamrock. Courtesy of Robert Matzen and the Eckelberry family.

“The Roughest 10 or 15 Minutes”

Operation Argument (aka “Big Week”) was the campaign the Eighth Air Force spent the winter of 1943/44 waiting on. In the span of six days, the U.S. military would drastically ramp up its daytime precision bombing campaign and cripple the Luftwaffe ahead of what would become the D-Day invasion.

Says Matzen, “The Eighth Air Force was determined to knock out the German aircraft manufacturing capabilities, so they looked for one week where they could have clear weather to have a series of campaigns, bombing missions to hit strategic targets related to aircraft manufacturing. Those missions were extremely dangerous.”

Jim flew the first day of Big Week over the Netherlands. It was considered a major success even though three planes in the 445th went down. One of his pilots called it “the roughest 10 or 15 minutes I ever spent.” But it was about to get much worse for the 445th.

On Feb. 24, Stewart was standing below Station 124’s tower when the remnants of the day’s planes limped home, some of them still smoking and on fire. Twenty-eight planes had taken off that morning, headed for the German city of Gotha, but three needed to return due to technical troubles while over the English Channel. Of the remaining 25 bombers in the air, only 12 returned to East Anglia. More than half had been shot down.

The next day, Jim would lead the 445th again in the skies for his second Big Week mission… over Fürth, an area just northwest of Nuremberg. The mission was part of an ambitious push that would send 754 B-17s and B-24s, with an escort of 20 groups of Eighth Air Force fighters and 12 squadrons of RAF Spitfires and Mustangs, into southern Germany to attack three Messerschmitt aircraft production centers and a ball-bearing plant.

With the bomb bay doors open at 18,500 feet, the air was already 40 degrees below zero in a Bavarian February. After a .88 shell nearly blew a hole between Stewart and pilot Neil Johnson’s feet, the temperature was dropping around their oxygen masks so quickly that ice began forming inside of the plane and on their gear.

Immediately after Dixie Flyer was hit, the first of several planes in the 445th went down in the hail of flak. Stewart could see as the wings of one B-24 under his command came off and the aircraft disintegrated midair. Only one parachute made it out as the rest of the crew plummeted. Perhaps it was in this moment that Stewart noted his crew’s parachutes were already sucked out of the vacuum in Dixie Flyer when the shell hit.

“How he didn’t die that instant is amazing,” Matzen says. “He looked over to his left and another plane [Nine Yanks and a Jerk] had a shell go directly through the cockpit on one side and out the other, and he thought that the pilot and co-pilot certainly must’ve been killed, and that plane was going to go down. But they lived, they made it back too. It was crazy.”

Relief from Allied fighter planes never came, but most of the 445th somehow made it back to the English Channel that day, with Dixie Flyer and Nine Yanks and a Jerk limping home. Indeed, with its fuselage in tatters, Dixie even lost two of its engines before it saw the English coastline. While running on fumes, Johnson and Stewart had to use every muscle in their fiber to brake the collapsing plane when it finally landed at Tibenham. The pair were unaware at that moment that their plane was literally breaking apart as it touched down, with a crack ripping from the bulkhead to the cockpit.

The plane’s bombardier Jim Myers recalled, “[Stewart] was blue from the cold whistling through the holes in the plane, but he hadn’t received a scratch.” At least not physically.

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As Matzen says now, “It was very interesting. The plane cracked and Jim cracked.” No one officially ever said Maj. Stewart became “flak happy” (the Air Force nickname for PTSD at the time) after the mission over Fürth, but Matzen contends no one needed to. In the first instance since December, more than two weeks passed before his CO allowed Stewart to go back in the air.

“This was the first time that he had to miss turns in the rotation, the leadership rotation leading missions,” Matzen says. “And that’s a huge deal to him. That’s him letting himself down in his crazy dedicated mind, in his perfectionist mind. All of a sudden, he’s not up to commanding in the air because he had been flying steady, steady, steady, then all of a sudden you look after February 25th, and he didn’t fly again till March 15th, and that’s a long time for him, and then he flew again on March 25th, then he didn’t fly again at all for a while.”

The pressure of leading, and perhaps more acutely the pressure caused by seeing so many of the men he trained go down, at last got to him.

Says Matzen “He had to just do what a lot of them did, which is go off into the country, take sodium amytal, and just chill and get reprogrammed. They’d sit and they’d talk to you, and they would give you perspective and they’d calm you down. Then they sent you back online.”

Left: 2nd Lt. James Stewart before combat missions in 1942. Right: Maj. Stewart in early 1944 after first two months of combat. Courtesy of Robert Matzen, the Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS, and the Film Stills Collection, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Brigham University.

After the War

Jim would fly two more missions as group leader of the 445th, including a bombing run over Berlin. However, the gaps between the final two of his dozen missions in the 445th belied that he was essentially becoming grounded. Shortly after his run over Berlin, he reluctantly accepted a transfer to the 453rd in Old Buckenham. He effectively became a chief of staff there, briefing the crews of his new group, including on the bombing runs in June 1944 that paved the way for D-Day. To his regret, Stewart did not fly on any of those tactical missions.

He eventually would make it back into the air, leading a total of 20 combat missions, although by his final mission in 1945, the Luftwaffe was all but destroyed and a near collision course between bombing groups under his command convinced Stewart and his commanding officers that his time in the air was done—Stewart even vowed never to fly again (he did not keep that oath).

When he finally returned to the States in the fall of ’45, the gawkish and youthful leading Mr. Smith had vanished. Graying and gaunt—features which came from spending the end of the war so stressed he could only keep peanut butter and ice cream down for weeks at a time—Stewart was nearly unrecognizable to his proud parents when he disembarked off the Queen Elizabeth in New York. He was also unsure if he’d ever work in Hollywood again.

“He was ever thinner with skin hanging from him” says Matzen, “He lost his hair and the rest of it went gray. That’s what dragged himself back from Europe and arrived in Hollywood. He thought he was only fit for character parts now.”

Like the first time he arrived in Hollywood, the only person waiting for him at the Pasadena train station in 1945 was his old acting buddy Henry Fonda. While Hank had maintained his movie star status during the early part of America’s WWII years, he ended up following Jim into military service by joining the Navy. But he also had taken a shorter break from the silver screen. When Stewart arrived back, the only place he had to move was Hank’s “play house,” a small home he built in his mansion’s backyard for his children Peter and Jane Fonda. But Hank assured Jim, it had a fully functional kitchen and bar. Priorities were covered.

“They just decompressed together,” Matzen says, “and I think Hank saw what the toll had been on Jim and just helped him. Neither of them was a big talker. So they came back together and they started building model airplanes, which is what they had done before the war. They flew model airplanes, they flew kites, Fonda had access to these war surplus military grade kites that they would take out and fly together and do their thing: not talk much, listen to records, make airplanes, and re-assimilate in the peacetime world.”

Hank also helped Jim get a new agent to adjust to the postwar Hollywood where actors could truly be free agents. Which came in handy since MGM terminated Jim’s contract after he refused Mayer’s idea of capitalizing off Jim’s wartime service with an adventure movie about him as an ace pilot called The James Stewart Story. According to Stewart, after he flatly refused to do the movie, LB called him a son of a bitch and said “you’ll never work in this town again.”

Best friends Jim Stewart and Hank Fonda in their ladies men era in 1930s Hollywood. Courtesy of Robert Matzen and the Jay Rubin Collection.

It’s a Wonderful Life

Of course Stewart did work again, making his comeback in the film he is still probably best remembered for: Frank Capra’s seminal holiday classic, It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). Like Stewart, Capra had enthusiastically joined the military and war effort back at the beginning, running the Army’s Motion Picture Film Unit. The phone didn’t ring for either man after they came home. And while It’s a Wonderful Life received an initially muted box office reception (it only became a classic after it started airing on television), it gave Stewart the confidence to rebuild himself as a leading man who carried long shadows.

“It’s a Wonderful Life has become synonymous with the holidays and with spiritual rebirth and perseverance, all those things that really embodied Jim were infused into this picture and captured for all time,” says Matzen. Nonetheless, even as Stewart was able to recapture the youthful energy that made him a star in the movie’s early scenes (wearing a hair piece as he plays twentysomething George Bailey), there was something harder there as the character aged throughout the picture.

Says Matzen, “When he comes back and he’s so much older, he has a dark streak from the war. He has rages, he can’t sleep, he’s got shakes, and he learned to channel it early on in a couple of places in It’s Wonderful Life when he flies off the handle [on the school teacher over the phone] and when he destroys the model he’s got in the living room, and he throws things and he terrorizes his family. I was never comfortable with that scene long before I wanted to write a book about Jim and the war. I was very uncomfortable with just whatever this menace was inside of him.”

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It would become a hallmark of some of Stewart’s most popular postwar roles. Director Alfred Hitchocck particularly enjoyed taking Capra’s all-American everyman and casting him against type, leaning into the menace. It’s there, faintly, when he becomes an obsessive voyeur in Rear Window (1954), or a snobby misanthrope in Rope (1948), and it’s all-consuming when Stewart channels Hitch’s own obsessions about molding blonde women into his fantasy idealizations in Vertigo (1958).

“Strategically, he was brilliant in recrafting his career,” says Matzen. “The same brain that had taken all those steps to get him to Europe, he ultimately applied that brain and took steps to get his career back in order and relaunch himself.”

Capt. Stewart newly arrived at East Anglia’s Tibenham in 1943. Courtesy of Robert Matzen.

Haunted by the “Happiest Times”

Until the end of his days, James Stewart refused to speak candidly about the war. Once in a while, however, he would hint at the importance of those memories. He even volunteered, “I was, in many ways, far happier in the service than I was at any time in my life. Closeness and camaraderie with all those wonderful guys. Feeling I was part of a whole, part of a divine scheme, with an obligation to do my best. It wasn’t playacting then. I was living it.”

Perhaps this is why he revisited Tibenham twice in his old age, making the long muddy journey from London to East Anglia, allowing his companions a few photos as he walked with his ghosts along the same ramparts of Station 124 where he used to wait for his men to return. What he thought during these reunions, however, remains a mystery. He kept his own counsel about those days. He even kept that part of himself closed off from the men he remembered so fondly.

“He did not keep in touch with [men he commanded],” Matzen says, “but he would be polite if they tried to get in touch with him. He did not seem to be a sentimental soul. He was too closed off for that…. They wanted him to come to their weddings or their kids’ weddings. ‘Oh wouldn’t it be great if Stewart would come?’ But nope.”

Like so much else, Stewart kept the happiest times of his life locked away with the scars they left.

Says Matzen, “His wife talked about the nightmares. His daughter talked to me about the nightmares and about how she would find her dad sitting alone in his study just staring. So yes, it was the time he felt was the most rewarding in his life because he did get to serve his country and he called them this family, this group of people dedicated to a cause all pursuing this common goal. And that really made him feel good, being part of this brotherhood. But he remained an introvert and a closed off person throughout his life… I think his wife understood him and Hank understood him, and boy, I don’t know beyond that. That’s a small group.”

Nevertheless, during the war this introvert was a part of a larger bombing group whole; it carried him through his darkest days in the air—and those that came long after.

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springbudeyes · 7 years ago

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Mayhaven Botan Takes a Vessel

Mandor your Andor, reporting. Disclaimer: This may all have been a ruse. I’m not claiming that the real Botan of Mayhaven has appeared to me. I am, however, informing the community of what’s happened so that others might investigate the matter for themselves. It happened last night—February 19th. Someone (I won’t disclose the username, mostly because I don’t fully remember it) logged onto the Mayhaven server asking about some pricey purchases—namely, Beacons. I didn’t think much of it. I visited the dark tower the player was building. An obsidian monolith in the middle of a meadow, it contained four unlit beacons at its center. I left – again – thinking nothing of it. Awhile later, I was failing badly at first-tier parkour when the fellow chatted me up like – and I paraphrase (as with almost everything quoted hereon out) – “Hey, I’m about to destroy the solar system. Botan’s possessing my body and has forced me to build a large machine. All he needs is a button. If you bring me a button, I’ll be able to finish it. Would you like that?”

Context: Mayhaven’s Botan has been trapped in Ianite’s Quintessence bubble for quite a while now. His only means of (temporary) escape, apparently, is through the bodies of those who are or have been loyal to him, such as his disciples. Apparently, this player was one such vessel.

The player – being half himself and half Botan, I assumed – explained that the doomsday machine was virtually impossible to find and even harder to break. Hm... Difficult, indeed. I asked if the earlier obsidian tower might have anything to do with it. Indeed, that was the very structure, and the player had tried to warn me, but Botan had made the message unclear. Unfortunately, my /back history had expired; I had no way of finding the machine again, bar sheer dumb luck, and time wasn’t on my side; Botan warned that the machine would fire on the next full moon. Needless to say, I wasn’t sold. Parkour alone was proving enough of an impossibility as it was. Anyway, I called into question why Botan didn’t simply possess the player to go make a damned button. That seemed to go over well. Botan’s puppet proceeded to the redstone shop. Oh dear. I followed. And there he was, running himself into the doorframe, one half of his mind keeping him out, the other trying to shove him in. I watched the two sides of the poor guy war against each other (a bit comically). Then, I had a magical idea. “I’ll sell out all the buttons! With my ten million Mayhaven dollars, I can certainly buy them all.” I approached the clerk. The man didn’t even sell buttons. It told Botan. He didn’t believe it. He, too, approached the clerk, and upon seeing the inventory, flew into a seizure. He flailed around the shop, ran out into the street, and began trying to mow down the city guards with his bow and sword. Fortunately, they were protected by the gods’ magic. Eventually, Botan found his way to the prayer houses. My gut clenched a little when he entered Ianite’s sacred space, and then Sage’s. Both were important to me. Botan had done his homework. He didn’t try anything. He did, however, shriek a bit at the statue of Sage—something about being abandoned by her. The host became exhausted. I invited him to the fountain for a drink of water. Right then and there, he shifted. Botan’s dark, twisted face – which I had just recently noticed leering from beneath a diamond helmet – slipped away, revealing the pale, badly scarred face of a kind-looking man. This was the player’s true self. He couldn’t remember anything he had said to me, but he remarked that his hands were sore, as though he had been building tirelessly. I begged him to remember the location of the machine. He said he was normally good at delving into minds for information, but that in this case, he was, ironically powerless. He said he’d sleep on it. Then, he invited me to his home. We climbed a winding staircase past an elaborate treehouse. The stairs led to a cliffside dwelling with rooms bridged by scaffolds. Weary, the player fell a few times. He grumbled a complaint about the impractical stairs, to which I echoed, “At least it isn’t that damn parkour.” When we finally got to his bedroom, he collapsed onto his bed, entering a quick sleep. While he snored away, I reflected on a conversation we’d had moments before he passed out. I’d asked him if it was possible to remove Botan from his body by killing him. Of course not; he would respawn with the demon still inside. In that case, might it be possible to banish Botan along with the player? You know, “ban” them? The player considered it possible. So did I. But at the moment, we had no help, being the only two people online. I wished for a longer /back history. I also wished for the Nvidia sword the sky people had swung around in Ruxomar. Then, I realized that the player, in his sleep, had turned into a sheep. In a state of denial, I paced back and forth across the room. I pinched myself a few times, then hit the sleeping sheep with an ax. The player retook his human form, hit me back, and climbed back into bed as if nothing had happened. “Are you dreaming?” I asked, knowing that it was possible for a shape-shifter to unconsciously morph. The player responded, “No, but you are.” Thoroughly spooked, I waited some more. I set a home, went to organize something in my house, and returned to the player’s cliff home to find that he had transformed again, this time into a chicken. I considered whacking the chicken with my ax, but thought better of it and went to the shop to buy some seeds. By the time I returned with the seeds, the chicken was gone. I tried to coax the creature, but it seemed to want to lead me somewhere. I followed the chicken through the long halls carved into the cliffs. It rifled through chests, doing small errands, it seemed. Was this Botan’s work? Or was the player tapping into something? After a surreal few minutes, the player whispered, “Oh. Am I still a chicken?” Yes, I said. The player seemed ashamed, turning back to human form. Well, then! We found ourselves in a room full of machines. “Oh, right,” the player remarked. “All I need is /craft.” “What for?” I asked. The player was holding a wooden button. My finger floated over the handle of my ax. Just then, the player vanished. It was going down. “Dang!” said Botan. “I missed noon.” I breathed a sigh of relief. (And so did Chimalus.) Apparently, noon was another key time at which the machine could operate. I needed to find a way to Botan, but I was stranded. My only path was through the player. Hoping that he still had some control, I sent a teleport request. He tried to accept, but ended up typing something along the lines of, “/tpaccestp”. Botan was tripping him up. I sent another request, this time with an encouragement. “Just pretend it’s a word unscramble. Get those thousand Mayhaven dollars. It’s more than Botan’s gotten in his life.” The player loosed an unearthly shriek. I was getting through. “I just want to admire your machine,” I said. “You can admire my ax while it splits you in half.” My whole body clenched as I prepared to be teleported. Moments later, I arrived the same obsidian structure I had seen in the field. Botan – having wrapped the player once more in his dark, twisted skin – was at the base of the monolith, applying the wooden button to a console. But the beacons didn’t light. I still had time. Botan said he was waiting for the next sunrise; I took his word for it. I tried breaking the glass at the top of the spire. A magic barrier protected it. Past that thin layer, the tower’s interior was hollow; I could see the four beacons clustered at the base, surrounded by various machines. If I could just break that glass... “Trust me to build here,” I said. “You wish.” So it wasn’t that easy. Botan buzzed around the monolith, fine-tuning. I repeated the phrase, “Trust me,” throughout the afternoon. “What’s this machine going to do?” I asked. He said the machine was going to absorb the power of the sun and use it to destroy the entire solar system. In retrospect, it was a little bit like that new Star Wars movie I didn’t particularly like. Night came. “I’m bad at pvp,” I insisted. “Chimalus uses a trackpad.” There was more silence. “Trust me.” He wasn’t giving. I shot an arrow. He was protected from that, too. He stared back at me. I almost flinched. We continued the same song and dance until sunrise. That was when the beacons burst to life. Two beams red, two beams black pierced the sky. The entire solar system, huh? Just Mayhaven – heck, just one life – would’ve been worth me fighting tooth and nail against this Botan. Imposter or not, he was my enemy; at the very least, he was training for when I fought the real thing. Why was I shaking? Why was Chimalus shaking? If we couldn’t stand our ground against this fool in a mask, what chance would we have against the real, extra-dimensional monster? Suddenly, an arrow thudded into my helmet. I was shoved off the spire. I landed on my feet, barely injured; my armor and acrobatics were exceptional. Botan was positioning himself for another shot. I hid behind a tree. He returned his attention to the machine. When my flight was restored, I flew back up and fired. This time, it worked. Botan was knocked to the ground. I took a position in a valley while he got his bearings on a hilltop. He saw me. I fired, knocking him back. He brandished his ax and charged, but my arrows of slowness took effect, holding him at bay. Repeated shots pummeled him until he thought better of his approach and pulled out his own bow. He shot back, but I was the better archer (surprisingly). I ran out of arrows of slowness. He lifted his ax again. We met in melee. Our axes blazed, pounding against armor. The exchange went on for half a minute. Then, Botan withdrew. “Neither of us has taken damage.” So it was. Our golden apples had done their work. Perhaps our weapons were a tad too dull as well. And just like that, Botan said, “I have to go.” The player logged off. I flew back to the spire. The protective field was gone. I broke the glass, destroyed the beacons and surrounding machinery, and lastly, plucked the button from the exterior console. I left a note of apology in a chest containing all the griefed machine parts—all except one. Then, I went to my home village and placed my newly named wooden button – “Botan” – on the roof of my village breeder. Hopefully, that doesn’t come back to bite me. If anyone from Mayhaven wants to know the name of the player, I don’t know the full thing, but I remember part of it, as well as the player’s rank. Thanks for reading.

#mianite #mayhaven #botan #world historian #prince andor

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progeny-of-the-fury · 7 years ago

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The Truancy of Guillemont | Part II

Log date: 11/27/17

OOC Note: The text in these logs are strictly for the reader’s enjoyment. Anyone using the knowledge displayed within this text without the participant’s knowledge risks the potential of blacklisting from future communication and roleplay. Please do not meta-game!

Tags: @darkknightsbread @pom-friend

A moogle is a strange creature. Tiny, plump, round, with a glowing pom up top and wings out its back. Innocent, quirky; a moogle is not good at a great many things. Their size does not lend to physical labor or combat, unless a great deal of aether is expended, and their eye for quality and crafting is but barely tapped into. One thing a moogle excelled at, outside of playing pranks on others, was getting a letter where it needed to go. And this particular letter found its way to Hikari, a woman formerly known as Uyraies, no matter where she was. The language within was rather urgent, only scarcely detailing that the De'bayle House was unable to find where Sir Guillemont was, and that we requested her presence to speak on the matter...

Denz and Adelise took the time away from their perusing of his study to meet with Hikari, while Astrelle continued piecing the parts together.

Standing beside her cousin, Adelise held her typical cold stare. She did not know this woman, nor was she very close to Guillemont. Even still, they were her family and she was here to find him. And they would find him, no matter what it took.

It wasn't all that difficult, moogle or not, to find Hikari if you knew what you were looking for. The persistent glow of her lantern shield gave her away from a malm off, even through the thick haze of the boggy air. With her letter clutched in one hand, Hikari trudged up the steps to the camp overlook. Her hair was shaggy and oily, unwashed and poorly kept. Her eyes were sullen; shy, nervous, and distant, even as they rose to search for a familiar face. Her armor was in poor condition and she was absolutely caked in muck, so thick that you couldn't even tell what color her boots used to be.

In contrast to the woman's tattered look, the two knights stood pristinely beneath the glow of the aetheryte. One of the knights would have a familiar silhouette, Denz's armaments taken after his brother. Perhaps a hopeful attempt to remind everyone why they here, or simply a thoughtless ploy to accidentally confuse Hikari. They stood, waiting for any sign of the woman, before her arrival hailed a small wave from Denz.

Hikari Inamoto freezes like a doe in a clearing when she sees the familiar shape of what she thinks is Guillemont. She stares, trying to decide if it's really him, shuffling forward on one foot until he waved to her. She sprinted towards the two, her face lighting up, until she realized something was amiss and stopped short. Her dark eyes flitted up and down Denz's form before her expression fell. "...You're too tall."

Adelise was almost honoured until she realized the the woman was definitely not referring to her. Sighing out an exhale, she glanced off in some small embarrassment.

A light chuckle rumbles through the helmet, before a hand came up to push up the visor. Blue eyes looked back at the woman, tilting his head. "Aye... I do not think we'd ask you to come out here to meet us if I were otherwise,” Denz says out.

"...Oh..." Hikari laughs, just once, but there's not much enthusiasm behind it.

Denz cleared his throat, gesturing to the woman beside him * "Have you met mine cousin, Adelise? She has joined us but a few months prior, been with us through some trying times."

"S...sorry. From...a distance, you looked just like..." Hikari stammered.

"Most... caused by me..." Denz added flatly.

Reaching hands up to unclasp her helm, Adelise respectfully removed it to expose her face. With it, long umber tresses came pooling out and toward her waist. "A pleasure," she remarked in a frigid tone.

"U...uhm. No." One mud caked hand raises to pull back some of her dirty hair. "...No, I haven't. I don't think." Hikari attempted a meek smile, lifting a hand in an offer to shake, but on a second glance at herself, she retracted it and bowed her head down in greeting instead. This woman was a mess.

"Aye. Our house has taken up new colors and Guillemont's armor was a fine model to take inspiration from." Denz waved a hand for them to follow him beneath a nearby canopy. "Before we turn to the main topic, have you kept well? You were under Father Salem's 'care' last we spoke, yes?"

Dipping her head toward Hikari, Adelise offered her a stone-hard expression. Eyes following the man as he walks off, Adelise glances back toward the woman before turning to walk herself.

Denz pulls off his own helmet as they settle under the cover, placing the plate object on the barrel next to him.

Over the Adelise’s shoulder, her blue wyvern sat perched dutifully. Watching, its deep gaze was nearly as piercing as the woman's he sat on.

"I--" Hikari paused. "...Uhm. I was, for a short time. Before I left for Yanxia. I've..." She pauses, biting her lower lip. "...somehow I felt m...more at home...back here."

"More at home here?" Adelise questions aloud. "Are you perhaps of mixed culture?"

"It's been. Uhm...it's been...a...strange time..." Hikari murmurs.

A plated finger came up to rub the side of Denz’s head, wondering if that was appropriate to ask.

A light of quiet dread lit up Hikari’s eyes for a moment. "...W...well, yes. Uhm. But...that..." She trails off, crossing her arms. Her filthy fingernails pick at the ties on her gauntlets. "B...but. Uhm. You can't...you don't know where Guillemont is? I...I visited him before I left..."

Adelise accepts the woman's hesitance for not wanting to discuss the subject, respecting that and not prying further. "Did you now? It was brought to my attention in the past two sennights that his room was vacant and his fish and plants dead."

"T...two..." She looks to Denz for confirmation.

"Yes..." Adelise’s head dips in some shame, "I knew very little of my cousin, but what I did know of him, he seemed rather disheveled.. So I did not think too much of this, I figured it was normal. That was an oversight of mine, that is unforgivable. But now is not the time for self-pity."

Denz nods his head. "Aye, two weeks, if not more that he has been gone. Beyond myself and our manservant, it is my knowledge you were the only other person who had visited him." Denz set his lips, trying not to sound blaming in his tone. "Do you know where he is?"

"N...No." Hikari shakes her head. "Since...since I came back from Doma, I haven't...I haven't really seen anyone at all… There...there wasn't any sign of where he had gone? And he left...he left his armor? His sword?"

"There are a few leads, musings, directions that we're being pointed in, though none of them are good. And no, he took nothing within when he left,” Denz recounted.

Beneath the dirt on Hikari’s face, the color drained away from her flesh. "Y...you don't...he wouldn't..."

"Wouldn't what?" Denz didn't even lead her on yet with their own clues collected.

“H...he wouldn't disappear someplace to do...uhm...to do something...to...you don't think..." She couldn't even bring herself to finish her thought, huddling into herself. Her chin lowered to her chest, the edge of her palm resting against her forehead. She trembled where she stood for a moment.

"We are unsure. Our recent leads have only shown us that he has taken a rather passionate interest in Kin- Voidsent." Adelise adds.

Hikari lifts her head again and blinks, eyes glistening from the formation of tears that hadn't yet fallen. "Voidsent?"

Denz blinks in surprise. He had always known the woman to be a tad awkward and quiet, but this was clearly something afflicting her emotionally. He gently went to put a hand on her arm, and gesture to the crate next to the name. "Uyra-" He clenched his face for a moment. Wrong name. "High-kari. Do you know -anything- that could help point us in the right direction? Our manservant was hesitant to say, but he saw Guillemont's behavior akin to that of a man possessed."

Hikari Inamoto shakes her head, struggling to keep herself together as she sat. "...No. I mean. He...Guillemont w...was pretty much always interested in...uhm...the darker side of things. At least, uhm...at least he always has been in the time that we've been friends...I don't...I..." Her face contorted, eyes squinting shut. She rested her elbows on her knees and bent forward, putting her head in her hands. "I-I sh...should have n-never have even left. I knew h...he was...having such...such a hard time..."

Denz looked at Adelise, eyebrows furrowing in pity for a moment, before crossing his arms in thought, musing to himself.

"You cannot berate yourself over this, Lady Hikari," Adelise affirms in a stern tone. "It will not fix what has happened, and it is not your fault. It is more his family's responsibility than yours, and we have all failed him. Even more so, it is his responsibility. But thinking on that will not bring him back."

"But I knew he sh...shouldn't have been left alone like that. After...after his arm was injured, he was so..." Hikari pauses, "If he...he didn't know what to even do with himself. Or how to live anymore...if he..."

"Did he tell you this as well?" Adelise asked with a narrow stare toward Denz.

"B...being a soldier was the only life he knew,” Hikari says quietly.

"He was a man bedridden by his wounds. I've been there as well, so I cannot be at fault for not thinking this would be the outcome." Denz shrugged his arms."He was studying history and magic, so he kept himself busy."

Hikari Inamoto sniffs an ugly sounding snort, smearing her face in whatever the cleanest part of her arm was.

"So he had told both of you, that he lost his will for life?" she asked incredulously. Shaking her head, Adelise exhaled through her nostrils akin to a scalekin. "There is nothing that can be done about this now, other than that we look for him. Next time either of you are told a person has lost their will, never leave them in that state without informing someone," she chides.

"H...he didn't...he didn't explicitly say..." Hikari began.

"Going missing, is the most beneficial of these evils. We are lucky to not have walked into his room to find him hanging!"

"I...I tried to..." Hikari flinches, drawing her lips into her mouth.

"Not everyone can help talk someone out of such a mindset, Lady Hikari," Adelise calms her tone, "but it is important those close to him be made more aware of the potentially deteriorating state he is in." Adelise sighs, rubbing her thumb and index to the bridge of her nose. "This is beside the point now though. What is important now is our strides in finding him. Did he not offer you any potential leads to his whereabouts?"

Denz furrows his eyebrows at Adelise. "Cease your chastising. It is getting us nowhere." He looked sidelong at Hikari. "You do not understand Guillemont as we have seen him. This is different, so we could not have foreseen this."

Motioning up a hand, Adelise held a dull expression, "already done, De'bayle," she remarks flatly.

Hikari shakes her head, not seeming at all reassured by anything Adelise had to say to her. When Denz speaks, however, she takes a breath to try to get a hold of herself again. "...No. I don't know where he could have been. I, uhm. I told him that he could still...still fight if he got to be skilled with magic, or he could become a trainer for new soldiers..."

"He was looking to investigate Red mage ruins in Gyr Abania." Denz shook his head. "From where I was taken, he is not there. The last bits of reading he seemed to be dwelling in were rituals and methods of summoning Voidsent."

"...Wh...what...uhm...what was that you said before about...s...someone said he looked like a man possessed?" Hikari asked.

"Our manservant, Gaspard. He was feeding Guillemont books and tomes on various nature to him, something he had taken to in his state. He would go through treatises and books within days and request more." Denz shrugs his arms. "Not exactly like Guillemont, but with nothing better to do..." He shakes his head. "I trust his words that Guillemont was not himself in those days. He was the one closest to him in his handicapped state."

Hikari listened, then adding, "Wh...when he got injured, do you think something else happened to him?"

"He was crippled by a Captain of the Skulls, those conscripted Ala Mhigans fighting for the Garleans. There was nothing but brute force behind the man, and no cursed weaponry involved anywhere. We checked." Denz stated.

Hikari Inamoto squints and wrinkles her nose, trying to think. "Was there...was there anything that he had taken with him when he left? A map, a book, an artifact, anything?"

Denz shook his head. "I don't know." He reached into his back pocket, taking out something he probably shouldn't have taken with him. It was a small silver medallion, a copper inlay of an eye in the center. It looked cheaply made and one of many, yet still seemed... off. He hands it over to her.

Adelise simply stood watching the interaction for the time being.

Hikari Inamoto blinks at the medallion. "Oh. That's..." She takes it in her hands, holding it over her lap. "I helped him dig for this. Early on when we met. He, uhm. He hired me to come along with him."

"It must be something precious to him then, if you two were close. That he would leave it behind..." Adelise taps the side of her fingers to her chin in thought.

Denz looks down at it carefully. "What is it?"

Hikari frowns shaking her head. "It's...an artifact." Clearly. "I don't remember what exactly it does or what it was supposed to do. It's been so long since then." Her thumbs run along the sides of the medallion, and she turns it around a few times in her hands. "I think I remember he had been contracted by someone else to search for it, but he must have...it must have fallen through, or not been the right thing they were looking for, if he still had it after all this time. I don't really remember m...many more details than that."

Denz nods his head as she speaks. Now they were making progress. "I need the name of the contractor, and the location where you two went searching."

"I...I can't remember the name, but if Guillemont keeps all of his letters or...or records of leves he takes...uhm...th...though I don't know why he...well, maybe, uh...tax purposes? I think you're supposed to...I'm not actually sure on that..." Hikari stops to consider. "B...but I remember exactly where we were digging."

Denz nods, holding out his hand for the medallion. "Alright. Adelise." He looked sidelong at his kin.

"It was in the Belah'dian ruins,” Hikari adds.

"Then that is where we will look," Adelise says firmly. "Shall we make haste there now? Or plan for an expedition there?"

Denz takes back up the medallion, pocketing it. "I'm going to question the Adventurer's guild for jobs regarding Belah'dian ruins. Most likely contracted in... Ul'dah." Denz says this with a bit of a sour tone. "I'm not keen to leave her in this state. Could you take her back to the house? Help see her cleaned up? If nothing else, Guillemont would be appalled if we simply left his close friend like this."

"Indeed. You will be coming with me, Lady Hikairi," Adelise remarked in more an order than a request. "I can see you are feeling a bit... lost yourself. Whether my cousin had requested it or not, I would not have left you like this."

"I...I don't remember if the job was one that was contracted through the Guild or not..." Still covered in mud, unwashed and sullen faced, Hikari looked between the both of them. "...Wh...what are you talking about? I'm...uhm. I'm j...just fine. I-I don't want to make...to be any trouble..."

His eyes cut to her harshly, perhaps mimicking Adelise's icy glare. It was not negotiable.

"Not a very convincing argument, my Lady," Adelise adds lamely. "If we thought you were trouble, we would not take you with us."

Hikarl wilts and mumbles out a tepid, "okay."

The knight loses his look quickly, placing a hand on her arm. "We'll find him, Hikari." With that, Denz nods to Adelise and curtly spins about to leave, heading southward... Until he ran back to collect his helmet.

Adelise had securely fastened her helm to her belt, "I will be your escort this evening, my Lady," she offers her an arm, "shall we?"

Hikari carefully extends her arm to Adelise, abashedly wiping some of the grime away from her hand first. She nods wordlessly.

The young woman hardly seemed to mind the Highlanders filth as she simply went about leading them forward.

The rest of the night came with a great deal of conversation. And piqued interest...

#The Dragon & the Hare #Journal #The Truancy of Guillemont

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riding-alpacas · 5 years ago

Text

Walking on a volcano

Making it home safe and sound I'm now sitting in mandatory self-quarantine for another 9 days. It took me a while to digest everything but currently I'm just grateful that I made it back and optimistic that we'll all tackle this situation together.

I don't have too much to do and can't go anywhere, so I'll just keep writing. There are a few more things I wanted to write about in this blog before I put down the virtual pen for an unknown period of time. One of these things is my last adventure I experienced before I packed up: A hike to the summit of an active volcano.

The little town of Pucón ended up on my radar for only one reason: You can climb 2,860 metres high Volcán Villarrica which has an active lava lake within its crater. When I arrived in town I immediately realised that I'd hate everything else about this place. It was another extremely touristy location and seemingly the centre for all adventure travellers who haven't done any of the usual shit (skydiving, rafting, canyoning etc.) in their life yet. My hostel was pretty awesome though: It offered private rooms in form of little hobbit houses! Cheesy, I know, but I always wanted to stay in one of those, so I took that opportunity.

A hobbit in Chile

The climb to the volcano can only be done with a guide unless you can prove that you have all the required gear and enough experience to tackle it on your own. They offered tours in the hostel but given that it was shoulder season I was hoping to find a group with only very few people.

During my stint in San Martín I accidentally bumped into Audrey - one of the girls that I spent some time with in Bariloche. We decided to move on together given that she had similar plans for Pucón. We went to a few independent travel agencies in a quest to find one that was affordable, reputable and not too busy. There weren't too many differences between all of them, likely due to the strict regulations that are in place for this kind of activity. Mawida Adventures offered us to do the tour even if it'd just be the two of us, so we chose them and booked us in for the next day.

The next day my alarm went off at 5:30 in the morning and I made my way to the meeting point. Luckily it was just Audrey, myself and our guide Ermin - nobody else signed up the day before. We packed up our bags and one hour later were the first ones at the lift. The real adventure basically started after a chairlift brought us up to 1,700 metres. From there it was a 45 minute walk through some grayish rocks until we got to the start of a glacier that covers the mountain. Crampons on and now it was time to zigzag through the ice. When we started our hike we were wondering why we had to wear helmets but it became pretty obvious now: The wind was constantly pushing little rocks from the top down the glacier. Even though they were the fluffy kind of volcanic rocks, they were pretty fast and sharp so you really don't want one of these falling on your bare head.

We were lucky with the weather

Great views from the start

Zig zag

The glacier wasn't as nice as Perito Moreno. It was covered in fine, black particles and there was no meltwater around. Apparently it goes straight under the ice. We still stopped at some impressive crevices though and had some little breaks in between to admire the view behind us. Towards the end the trail became extremely steep and it was more challenging than I thought.

Don't wanna fall into this one

Quite steep

Close to the summit the ice disappeared and we were walking through a rocky environment again. Audrey and I are both quite fast walkers so we were the first ones who made it to the top that day - and what a rewarding walk it was. The views were absolutely spectacular! But looking into the crater itself was also quite astounding. Rust-coloured rocks to the left, sulfur-coloured rocks to the right. Loud roaring from within the crater, gases hissing out of it and what are these funnily structured rocks over here? Oh right, it's the ice from the glacier. It was an interesting world up there with lots of strange shapes to discover at every corner. At one point I decided to put on my gas mask as the wind started to push the smell right towards us. We admired the view - which included a feminist flag that a female guide positioned there a couple of days earlier on International Women's Day - and after 15 minutes we had to make our way down again.

No lava today

Did I mention the views?

This was an adventure in itself. When we climbed up we could already see some pre-grooved chutes. We were about to use them right now. Both of us were carrying around a little piece of plastic with us. It was now time to get them out and sled down the glacier! I was looking forward to this but it actually turned out to be a bit shit. Because of us walking up so fast, most of the slides were still very icy. I had a lot of trouble breaking with my ice axe and ended up crashing into some of these fluffy rocks halfway through the slide. I bruised my fingers and lost my ice axe but fortunately was still able to stop. The second part was a bit more slushy, so breaking actually worked but I have to say that I didn't enjoy this activity as much as I thought I would. I much more enjoyed the final section of the descent. It was very sandy and we could basically run down sliding our feet through the super fine ground.

Audrey getting ready to toboggan

Back in Pucón we were greeted with some drinks, grapes and cheese which was a nice touch. It was a good opportunity to catch up with our awesome guide Ermin who told us a lot of nice stories about the mountain, the town and how he ended up doing this kind of work. As a side note: Don't ever do a rafting tour when you're in Pucón. Apparently the guides are extremely underpaid.

For the following days I tried to find something that would bring me away from all the noise in the town. My first try was a little overnight kayak trip on one of the surrounding rivers. I quite enjoyed the kayak thing I did in El Bolson but unfortunately they didn't have enough people to do it.

My second option was to rent a car and drive 2 hours up to Conguillío National Park and do some hikes. I already had an eye on rental cars a few days before I arrived in Pucón. Apparently Hertz had a branch in town and when I checked, they always had cars available. The day I was finally ready to book, they didn't have any anymore. I thought this would be because it was quite short-notice now, so I decided to go to the branch directly and just ask. It turned out that the branch actually doesn't exist. Standing in front of the address I found a... craft shop. When I did a bit more research I noticed that I wasn't alone read some fascinating stories. Some people actually booked a car online, went to the non-existent branch and were later fined by Hertz for not picking up their vehicle. It's a mystery to me how something like this can happen to such a well-known global brand!

I wasn't ready to give up just yet and found another car rental in town. But when I checked out their fleet I only found some very old and small Suzukis - highly doubting they'd make it through 100 kilometres of gravel. That was the point when I gave up on option number two and decided to just head up to Santiago to sit down and think about what I'd do next.

The volcano wasn't the last and only activity I did in Pucón though. On my last day, Audrey and I decided to head to El Cañi, a little conservation area where you could find the infamous monkey puzzle trees that grow in the area. The seeds from these trees are sold everywhere in the streets of Pucón and unfortunately I missed to try them.

We did a little hike that I didn't have any expectations about and it turned out to be quite nice. After a super steep and slippery ascent over an old logging road we found ourselves in a beautiful lush forest, surrounded by a surprising amount of bamboo. Towards the end we also finally saw heaps of monkey puzzle trees and walked a little circuit that led us to seven different lagoons. It felt a bit like an enchanted forest - also because we got lost once, ran into some stinging bush and became very confused by the marks more than once. But we also met two cute puppies at one of the lagoons which made up for everything.

Monkey puzzle trees

More of them

Puppy!

I wasn't super keen on this walk but I'm thankful that Audrey convinced me to do it. It was a great way to escape the hustle and bustle and be out there in the quiet nature for a day.

You all know what happened then after I took the bus to Santiago. On the first day I was still optimistic and explored the city a tiny bit. My hostel was very close to the centre of the civil protests and I actually experienced these a little bit because my first night was on a Friday - the day the protests take place. The whole evening there was a lot of noise outside with firecrackers going off everywhere. We even had a pepper spray grenade being thrown into the yard of my hostel. Quite intense but I don’t think I was in danger at any time.

Police getting ready

I don't think they like their government very much

However, I mainly wanted to use the time to research what I’d do next, but instead I researched COVID-19 and made the very spontaneous decision to abort my trip. A couple of days later, Chile decided to close all their borders and the whole of South America is in a state of emergency now. I have heard a lot of stories from travellers who decided to stay and are now being kicked out of their hostels and moved around by the police. Sounds like I made the right decision.

In the next few days I'll write a few more articles about some other random things. Hopefully one day I can continue travelling through South America and bring this blog back to life.

#chile #pucon #villarica #volcano

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toadrakua · 7 years ago

Text

Lost Causes: Draft

This was the story I submitted to Written In Light, a Fanzine based around the game “Destiny.” After having slacked off for most of the time allotted, I only just managed to “complete” it after asking for an extension on the deadline. However, this proved to not be enough, and it was rejected due to not quite fitting in with the theme of the Fanzine. So instead I have decided to post it here, all fourteen-hundred and ninety-five words of it, so that I may share anyway, even if it did not manage to completely tell the story I wished it to tell in the 1500 word limit I was given. I hope all enjoy it, and remember:

Eyes up Guardian.

“Guardian, I’ve located the distress beacon,” The ghost said as it fizzled into existence in Draco-66’s face. “But are you sure we should be boarding a Fallen Ketch? Alone?”

Shoving the baseball-sized AI away with a well-armored hand, the Exo Titan returned to the controls of his jumpship. With swift metal figures dancing across the console, he input the command codes necessary to initiate interplanetary travel.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine, Norm. There’s no need for us to bother another Fireteam with what’ll likely amount to tagging salvage,” Draco replied to his long-time companion, just before hitting the launch key. After a moment of pregnant silence, the Fangs of Nyx’s jump drive whirred to life, sputtering and groaning as it hesitantly obeyed its pilot. As the Titan stared out at the stars through the cockpit glass, the vessel leapt forward, rendering that very image a blur as time and space were ripped asunder in its wake.

A half hour later, and the jumpship lurched back into real-space, the Guardian and his Ghost found themselves staring down the bow of one of the largest ships still operating in the solar system: a derelict Fallen Ketch. As he brought the ship about to face the alien vessel, Draco couldn’t help but marvel at the shear size of the warship before him. Even halfway obscured by the darkness of space, the rotting hulk made his favored jumpship seem like a meager pebble lying against a boulder in a large, empty abyss. It was said by the Warlocks back home that these behemoths having been transporting the four-armed Eliksni—known to most as “The Fallen”—about the universe since the fall of their empire hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago. Not that they had thought he’d been listening. In their eyes, a Titan like him should have no interest in these things. That couldn’t have been farther from the truth. The Fallen had always intrigued him. To him, at least, these interstellar nomads had never come to humanity’s shores with the intention to rule, like some, nor were they here to destroy it all, like others. From what he’d read from Cryptarchy’s archives and the Warlocks’ tomes, they may have just been fleeing the same darkness that had also nearly consumed humanity. Were either species not so stubborn and territorial, maybe there could have been peace?

Either way, here was one of their ships to explore, and this guardian was not about to pass up the chance. As Fangs of Nyx approached the lurking vessel, Norm set to work breaking in. Patching in through the jumpship’s communications array, the crafty little cuboid weaved its essence deep into the tangled, fractured corridors of the Ketch’s subsystems, sniffing out any form of working code it could find. It’ll take ages for me just to cobble together a program to open a simple door, let alone reactivate an airlock, Norm mused. Heh, ages for me. Somehow I don’t think it’ll be more than a few nanoseconds for my guardian. The Ghost noted the irony of that statement just as it finished compiling the data. Not even a second after it had started, it chirped a word of accomplishment to its peer, and relinquished control of the ship to Draco for final approach on the hangar.

Steering the craft towards the shuttered orifice, the Titan nodded to his long-time companion to pop the hatch, and so it was. WHOOSH! Immediately, debris came pouring out from the opening into open space—and slamming into the view-screen was the distinctive many-limbed silhouette of a Fallen Vandal; the bloated corpse of one, at the very least. It only stuck around for little bit, leaving behind a trail sticky bodily fluid against the portion of hull it had impacted. As his ghost replicated the sound of gagging behind him, Draco brought their ship in for landing, and disembarked. As soon as the magnetic soles of his boots hit the steel flooring, the Guardian was guns up, the barrel pointing at whatever dark corners an Eliksni could have been hiding in.

“Looks like no-one’s home,” he told nobody in particular. His ghost scoffed in response.

“What was your first clue? The lights being off, the corpses littering the floor? Or was it the lack of a welcoming party that tipped you off?”

If Norm’s Guardian was glaring, he couldn’t tell through the helmet. Never-the-less, the duo set off down the winding corridors of the defunct warship, Norm lighting the way, and Draco scanning every approaching fork in the road for a possible ambush. Each hallway they passed through opened up to another, each littered from floor to ceiling with grime and scraps of emptied ether sups, scraped dry of the nourishing substance the Fallen used to survive. Every so often they’d come another body; emaciated skeletons of what was once a proud Fallen warrior, their bellies bloated from rot, the life drained from now soulless eye sockets. For what seemed like the millionth time their career together, both Guardian and ghost were glad they couldn’t smell the no-doubt toxic fumes that meandered about these halls. After about an hour or so of walking, the two found themselves in a larger, more well lit space. He’d seen this type of set-up before back on Venus; a large, tiered open plan lined wall-to-wall with glowing displays and headed by an enormous throne at its back wall. Normally, the cathedral-esque command deck was just one of many areas on the ship that could be used to pilot the mammoth vessel, yet Draco and Norm had just hit the jackpot by coming across it first. Norm spared no time getting to work sifting through data logs as its guardian began scanning for any signs of movement.

His head on a swivel, Draco found himself following the trails of sticky liquids and wasted sup caps back to their deceased origin. Just like every room before it, this one was littered with the bodies starving Fallen who had become far too weak to carry on. There was a difference, however, between these Fallen and the ones who’d come before. From the looks of it, most of those who died here did not do so of their own accord. A surprising number bore wounds from shock weapons found not too far from other Eliksni across the floor. Some, it would appear, died from self afflicted injury, their own pistols still grasped in their claws. Of all the death that permeated from within this room, none were as pitiful as what sat displayed upon the once proud throne. Slouched over the empty vial of ether still clutched in it claws was but a lowly Dreg, poised as though praying to some deity that would never come.

Muttering a curse under his breath, Draco found himself caught off guard by the loud crash on metal coming from beyond the only other open passageway. After repeating himself, he called for his ghost to follow as he rushed in, gun at the ready and gearing for a fight. When he was certain the perpetrator behind the noise has stopped running, he slowed his paced to near a crawl and began his search. Tip-toeing past bits and pieces of shattered Servitors, the Titan took aim at every nook and cranny that looked large enough to hide a Dreg. As he turned the corner, an erratically blinking light caught his eye. There, at the end of the corridor, sat a malfunctioning Servitor, raw ether still dripping from its mismatched carapace. Behind it, he could just make out a series of four tiny eyes, staring, unblinking, back at him. Lowering his weapon, his ghost reemerged behind him, its metaphorical jaw hitting the floor.

“Is that an… Infant?” For once, Norm didn’t have anything snarky to say, and just floated there as its Guardian proceeded to approach the juvenile Eliksni, silently setting aside his firearm and gently cooing. Chittering with fear, the child seemed unable to decide whether to run and hide, or try and fight a battle it could not win. Realizing that himself, Draco brought his eyes from the malnourished youth, and down to the still dripping ether from its broken protector.

“Ghost… Norm. You think you can fix this Servitor’s ether processors? Maybe boost the signal of the distress beacon?” He asked the floundering AI still questioning the existence of the creature before it.

“What—I— yes, I... probably can,” Norm managed to sputter. “But the question is, why do you want to me to help feed a future killer of Guardians?”

“Because we can’t take it with us to the tower, and I can’t simple drop it off at the nearest Fallen orphanage, now can I?” Draco replied as he got to feet, being careful to quickly stow his weapon before the child saw him holding it. “Besides, isn’t that what being a Guardian is all about?”

Norm sighed. “Well, I guess I can’t argue with that logic.”

#Destiny #destiny game #destiny 2 #fallen #exo #titan #guardian #fanfic #fanfiction #Draco-66 #ghost #Norm

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