Character Dinner Party

[[West Balcony]]

"Oh not at all." Erina smiles hiding her true disgust at the gluttony.

[[West Balcony]]

Wylfing floats a few drops across the table and swallows.

"That's.... interesting." He quickly takes a sip of whisky to cleanse the taste from his mouth. "Though Johnathan I don't even know why mages mind, ooh look I can summon fire and brimstone and.... just snap their spinal chord already."

"I don't remember you doing that when you were younger." Phoebus downs his whisky and reaches for the baijiu.

"When I was younger I didn't know the spinal chord was a thing."

Phoebus consumes the glass of baijui before rapidly consuming another half glass of whisky.

"What the fuck is that crap?"

[East Balcony]

"Oh, okay then." Nick said, crossing his arms. "Just thought I asked."

Adam had remained quiet while the others talked, looking over at the western balcony. So far, there was only one person he saw that was around his age. He thought about going over to talk to her...but he didn't want to be rude and leave the two. He decided to wait until they finished.

[West Balcony]

"It's interesting." Cyrus pours himself another glass. "But by all means, stick with the whiskey. You three do have two bottles to work on, after all. I'll go at my own pace."

"Thanks, Cy." Jonathan pats him on the head. "You know, lots of magic users also carry weird clockwork stuff. Your energy sources are limited, after all, and it's usually a better idea to use a little bit and let the machine do the rest of the work than just flinging around fireballs. Of course, there are ways of using those same devices without magic, in case you run out of energy, and so people like me can pick them up."

Cyrus nods. "Part of my job is designing those for the army. It's fun."

[West Balcony]

"Clockwork?" Wylfing stares at Johnathan. "I don't really see how that's going to help. I'm not that weak, I can keep up magic for quite a while you know."

Phoebus raises an eyebrow "So wait, what exactly does your army have?"

[West Balcony]

"All sorts of things!" Cyrus says before Jonathan can even reply to Wylfing. "We'll be mass-producing lightning cannons soon, and we have an entire division of soldiers that operate—"

"Slooooow down." Jonathan roughly musses up Cyrus's hair. "I guess magic works differently in your world, Wylfing. We need reincarnated plant sprites to use magic. It's not about endurance."

"Or a Manifestation, like Balto."

"But the less we say about that fucker the better."

[West Balcony]

Phoebus laughs. "The weapon of choice in our world in large scale battles.... is a pike. Well and halberds too. I suppose crossbowmen and longbowmen get in on the action too."

Wylfing's face is completely blank. "Reincarnated plant spirits. That's... interesting. No where we come from magic is a matter of your strength, and if you have a familiar their strength as well."

He sighs, "Of course they possess you at the drop of a hat if you borrow energy from them, so that's to be avoided. Besides your energy is implemented ridiculously well, it's easier to do everything than with magic than to actually do it. Of course, it can also render you catatonic or dead....... so generally you should give it a break."

He raises an eyebrow "But really, where the heck does one get reincarnated plant spirits." .

[West Balcony]

"It's easy." Jonathan makes two fingers "walk" across the table. "La, la, la, eating leaves and living in the gardens OH SHIT I'M DEAD." His hand lies on the table as he makes choking noises. "And then the other little things bury it and a few days later a clockwork rose bush starts growing. You take energy from the petals."

"That's, er, the gist of it." Cyrus shrugs. "Dear me, don't you at least have catapults?"

[West Balcony]

Phoebus laughs. "Well yes but what good is a catapult going to do? Oh I can launch rocks at you. Oh my. In a siege you have to get to close, you get sniped off with a bunch of arrows or a bunch of fucking crossbow bolts. If you're really lucky you'll get impaled on something from a ballista, quite a fucking honor. And I said a battle, a siege isn't a battle. Walls are sort of difficult to blow up with an arrow."

Wylfing sighs "What you want is a trebuchet, and they're horribly inaccurate, very difficult to assemble, and if they have enough mages completely ineffective. Generally you'd be better off just using your energy to have some mages try to collapse part of the wall. It's easy enough to just move water around and laugh as it falls apart from the foundation moving."

He looks upwards, "Or if you're me you just happily hop on your familiar and kill everyone half exposed. Then the nobles beg for mercy and surrender because suddenly large rocks are being dropped on their oh so precious palace and wrecking the precious porcelain. Or killing everyone more likely."

Phoebus drums his fingers on the table, "But anyway, in a battle up until recently we've been dealing with knights, and if you know how to make a rock from a CATAPULT consistently kill five of them I would be intrigued. At least use a mangonel or something."

edited 10th Aug '12 11:55:02 PM by Aqueos

[East Balcony]

Daniel smiled at Caer's description of Guinevere since it was so similar to Sophronia's. He was half expecting Caer to say she was a summoner as well, but that would have made him a bit uneasy. "I know what you mean," he said, "I have a friend who has the same problem. Of course, there's always rune magic, so she manages somehow."

Daniel stood quietly for a while, trying to come up with a new topic of conversation. It was then that Ryu said that he would have to leave the gala and, with a quick nod, he got up and left. "Hope we meet again," Daniel said, and, in his thoughts, added, 'But hopefully not on Gaia."

East Balcony

Guinevere gave Ryu a respectful nod on his way out. Caer, on the other hand, failed to notice his exit.

"Runes?" she asked. "You mean, those little symbols the stronger wizards carve into their staffs? For us, those things are merely power enhancers - on their own, they're no good for magic."

[West Balcony]

"Just wanted an idea of where your world is, techonlogy-wise." Cyrus drinks more baijiu. He seems to be enjoying it. "No offense, but it's not very advanced."

"Be nice, Cy."

"In comparison to ours. Fair?" He sets down his shot glass a little harder than necessary. "Surely, this familiar of yours must have limits, Wyling. It sounds like you're a living god when you have it around."

[West Balcony]

"Well, for starters it regains energy really slowly. It doesn't eat, it merely generates power itself." Wylfing taps the table. "It's sort of like a plant. Sure it's capable of a lot of power but if it exhausts it we're doomed and back to it's seed."

Phoebus snorts, "Basically it's a huge humongous dragon until it runs out of energy. Then it runs out of energy and makes Balto look like a wimp in the freaky department. Also it tends to possess Wylfing to protect itself for a few hours and does all sorts of weird things."

[West Balcony]

"That almost sounds like a clockwork rose bush when you leave it to grow," Cyrus says. "The petals will turn from brown to blue eventually. But of course, lugging around a plotted plant wherever you go isn't exactly fun."

Jonathan snorts. "Balto must have been holding himself back because he knew Estela was going to kill him if he did any of the usual shit at a fucking dinner party. But that familiar does sound pretty freaky. Does it have a name? Is it good company?"

[[West Balcony]]

Wylfing smirks "It won't let me name it, it made me punch myself in the crotch last time I did, and it's incapable of speaking to anyone but me and it does so through emotions and thoughts. So no to both. And don't tell me freaky, once it took the form of a whole pile of mutilated corpses that crawled across the floor."

Phoebus laughs, "You'd be better off bringing a chamber pot, at least it won't knock over a bunch of tables."

edited 12th Aug '12 10:23:18 AM by Aqueos

[East Balcony]

Daniel cocked his head to the side. It seemed Caer had confused his concept of a rune with something else. "Well, we don't just carve symbols onto stuff," said Daniel, rubbing the back of his head, "Every spell has specific geometric patterns that we have to draw within a circle, only after which we draw Sorceric symbols."

"But yeah, if you don't place those symbols at their proper location, the rune ends up doing nothing. Since our job involves a lot of fighting, no one really takes the effort to draw them." Daniel smiled before adding, "Of course, the friend I mentioned doesn't actually have to draw the runes by hand, so she manages to use them pretty competently."

edited 11th Aug '12 11:42:20 PM by Elfhunter

East Balcony

Caer nodded. "Ah. Different worlds, different concepts of what this or that is," she replied. "Your runes sound awfully awkward to use, what with having to have them in a specific location. It's a concept we're rather unfamiliar with."

"Gwinny gets around her lack of a voice by using Blade Magic, which is essentially using magic in place of swords, shields, and other such weaponry." she added. "It's the only type of magic that humans can use without saying anything, possibly because it's the only type of magic humans themselves developed."

[East Balcony]

"I see," Daniel said, turning to Guinevere, "Your powers seem to be similar to mine. Or rather, the power my sword gives me. I am limited by the amount of minerals in the soil however."

"But it's interesting that you can develop new types of magic in your world. Our system is a tad bit more rigid than that. All we can do is discover spells that had been lost or guarded by other fac..." Daniel checked himself from saying something that would force him to explain the political climate of Gaia, "...people."

edited 12th Aug '12 11:37:31 AM by Elfhunter

[West Balcony]

"Hah. Amazing." Cyrus looks unimpressed. "We could argue all night, but let's not call Balto over to demonstrate, please."

"How about we play a game while we wait for our food?" Jonathan reaches into his pocket and pulls out a very old pair of wooden dice. "I roll. You guess what they add up to. If you can't get it in three guesses, you have to drink that many shots."

"Er... you do realize that could be up to twelve shots, don't you?"

"Yeah. What of it?"

"Nothing. Nothing. But I'm not playing."

"Good idea. That shit you've got over there is strong enough already."

"So is yours. If you're going to play, get some beer or something."

Jonathan grins. "You hear this guy? So sweet. If you're going to stay sober, Cy, I guess you should roll. Don't lose 'em or Wilhelm's going to find a way to shove my violin up my ass."

edited 12th Aug '12 10:53:45 PM by SnowyFoxes

[[West Balcony]]

Wylfing raises an eyebrow, "Shots of beer, well then I suppose we'll be needing these."

He snaps his finger and his breathing rate increases a bit as six bottles of beer appear on the table.

"The waiter said the cheap beer was by the sake. Anyway I'm first six seven eight."

"Really? What's the fun in a drinking game if you play it like that."

"We're not drunk Phoebus, there's no fun yet."

Phoebus taps the table annoyed "Really, you being you you'd say that."

"All is fair in drinking games. Roll would you?"

[West Balcony]

Cyrus's face is completely blank as he accepts the dice from Jonathan. He cups them in his hand, shakes them, peeks inside, and carefully sets them down: a two and a five.

"Congratulations. Thank goodness Jonathan is doing all my drinking for me."

"What?"

"I hate beer."

"This is bullshit, Cy."

"I can get the alcohol out of your system later with a little help from my Manifestation. The same goes for the rest of you. It only gets difficult if I'm the one who's drunk, and I'm sure stopping myself periodically to cleanse my bloodstream will make things drag."

Jonathan grumbles as he pours the beer. "All right, who's next?"

edited 12th Aug '12 11:23:17 PM by SnowyFoxes

[[West Balcony]]

"Fine, six, seven, eight."

Wylfing looks up at Phoebus and smirks.

"What, odds are that works. Besides, then Johnathan has two rounds in a row."

edited 12th Aug '12 11:24:10 PM by Aqueos

[West Balcony]

Cyrus rolls again. "Ha. Ten. Drink up, Wylfing. When are you going to let Phoebus have a turn, anyway?"

Jonathan smirks as he pours the beer for Wylfing.

[West Balcony]

Wylfing downs the whole drink with no problems as Phoebus lists off some numbers, "Nine twelve and eight."

Wylfing sighs "You know the odds are horrible for that."

"Someone has to get drunk Wylfie. Someone does."

He kisses Wylfing on the cheek. The whiskey must have already had an effect.

edited 12th Aug '12 11:35:32 PM by Aqueos

[West Balcony]

Another roll. Cyrus snickers. "Four."

"Well, life tends to be more intersting when you're drunk, isn't it?" Jonathan sighs. "My friends and I started drinking when we were about fifteen or sixteen. Good times. Good times. It's kind of mystifying how no one ever caught us. I guess it helps that Wilhelm's uncle was giving us advice. Turns out he did the same fucking thing when he was in school."

[[West Balcony]]

Phoebus gulps down the beer in an instant.

"I remember the nobles used to play this drinking game, you'd have a bout of fencing and then whoever lost consumed a bottle of wine. You kept going until someone passed out."

Wylfing laughs "This idiot challenged a guy and lost, I was stuck battling for his honor through three of the other guys servants and him as collateral. It's good they were tipsy to begin with."

"What you didn't enjoy it?"

Wylfing laughs "Oh no that was fun, you that drunk then was like a hilarious game."

edited 12th Aug '12 11:49:25 PM by Aqueos