Civilizations Long Lost: The Expedition - Roleplay Thread

Nobody knows why. Nobody knows when.

We merely know that one day it simply happened and the entirety of our world was no more. Like a giant weed that slowly grows over every single plant in the garden, leaving only the sunflower hidden behind the fence. Whether it was the capricious Scorpion that decided to save us or anything else - we have survived.

It's been eons ago. Some even begin to think that there was no Catastrophe to begin with and that simply Peninsula is all this world has in the first place, apart from the frozen North from where men has arrived long ago. They had never seen the ruins hidden in The Wasteland. Tombs, houses, whole cities of nothing but desolation. Cities that are still loaded with treasures, be they material or else.

Apart from smaller groups and lone wolves trying their luck on the edge of The Wasteland, every now and then someone gathers enough coin and madmen to pay them with said coin. This time it's the Federation. Is it yet another voyage which goal is to pillage what's left of our ancestors? Or maybe there's something else hidden behind this?

That remains to be seen.

---

City-State of Breitland was always a no man's land. A relatively recent addition to powers ruling over Peninsula it was where mercenaries, adventurers and other such fearless individuals gathered, looking for an easy coin and some thrills, be they walking into The Wasteland or raiding Demons' Land for yet another time. In exchange for wealth and hardy men countries of Peninsula provided Breitland with food and other such necessities required to organize such journeys.

Claudia Carreau sighed in disappointment. It seemed that the challenge issued by the Federation was too much even for the hardiest mercenaries. The officials made it clear: at least twenty people if this project is to be kickstarted. So far the former Paladin managed to gather only a couple of various-looking men and women, but that was still a long shot before twenty.

"It looked so promising..." She mumbled more to herself than to anyone else, grumbling. She's been sitting over this stupid stand called "Candidates" way too long already...

Was there really so little brave and/or insane people around?

grah

Osmund was rather fond of Breitland, the city was full of all sorts of wonderful people who he could attempt to convert into understanding and appreciating the gifts of Plaguefather Typhus. After a bit of wandering, Osmund eventually stumbled across a potential convert. Cautiously approaching Claudia, Osmund cleared his throat and said "Excuse me, can I take a moment of your time to talk to you about Typhus? I promise I won't take too much of your-" Osmund's muffled voice was interrupted by a fit of violent coughing. Once he'd finished, Osmund said "Terribly sorry about that. As I was saying; I won't take too much of your time and if you don't wish to speak I'll be right on my way."

From the shade of the stand emerged a snakeman. Half-covered in gray sackcloth garments, his scales of brown, orange, and yellow could barely be seen beneath a layer of dust. His tail held a staff made of varnished-black roots topped by a strange white skull. As he approached Osmund, he made a gesture to Claudia along the lines of I've got this.

"Greetingss follower of Typhuss, we would love to hear more, perhapss you would be interested in teaching our group about the Plaguefather during an extended... pilgrimage we are about to undertake?" he fiddled with a string of red prayer beads while he talked, looking towards The Wasteland as he finished.

edited 18th Sep '14 4:34:47 AM by justanid

Amber closed her eyes and began muttering a spell. As she whispered, flames began to form on her fingertips, dancing around in the slight wind. As the spell continued, the flames grew stronger and stronger, until both her hands were covered in flames. Amber opened her eyes and flung her hands into the air. Flames shot into the air, and began falling gently to the floor, like lava from a volcanic eruption. She smiled. "Nailed it.", she said, waving her hands to get rid of the fire.

Picking her bow and arrows, and her sword, she walked over to the others. "The Plaguefather? Who's that?"

edited 18th Sep '14 4:01:57 PM by Tools

ಠ_ಠ

Though it wasn't visible under his hood and mask, Osmund was beaming "That would be wonderful! There's so much to talk about and I'm sure I could teach anyone interested in why you should accept the blessings of the Plaguefather." After a brief pause, Osmund wheezed and added "If no one chooses to accept Father Typhus' gifts, I'll be more than happy to serve as a healer and cook assuming you don't have either already."

Upon hearing Amber ask who The Plaguefather was, Typhus turned to face her and said "Typhus, God of Diseases and rot, is known as the Plaguefather and I am one of his many clerics! -KOFF! KOFF!- Excuse me for that, worshiping Typhus has a few downsides, one of them is frequent coughing fits. I don't suppose you'd be interested in learning more about Typhus and how he cares about each and every one of us?"

edited 18th Sep '14 8:57:34 AM by Eachiunn

The snakeman interrupts Osmund before he can finish. "Of coursse, of coursse we would. Pleasse sign here." Reaching down, he hands Osmund an ink-pot with a quill sticking from it, before moving to hold out a charter scroll. It's carefully rolled to hide the legal fine print and shows a paltry list of signatures. "We would love to hear more about how Typhuss caress for uss, it iss therefore such a shame that two organizationss cannot proselytize in the same area, and I would hate to see you arrested." He shakes his head and sighs, tapping the scroll. "You are, of coursse, welcome to help recruit more memberss for our pilgrimage."

edited 18th Sep '14 11:00:19 AM by justanid

Well, this has taken on an interesting turn. A turn Miss Carreau wasn't exactly happy to see.

Of course she knew about Typhus. What kind of Paladin - well, former Paladin - would she be if she hadn't heard of their capabilities? Bunch of plaguebearing fanatics.

This one, however, seemed... odd. Something about him didn't seem quite right. Was it this odd friendliness that he displayed? Before she could find a diplomatic way to tell him to sod off, that accursed snakeman came knocking.

Oh dear Lord..., she thought, trying her best to mask the increasing scowl. This was going to be one hell of an expedition.

"We can always appreciate a capable healer." She said, keeping her best neutral expression up, giving Osmund a careful stare. "As Urthslid said, sign in under the last name."

Then appeared the elf girl she'd seen playing with fire, quite literally. "Oi, you too to join the expedition?" She asked, tapping her fingers over the stand.

grah

Amber looked at the woman on the stand, fire dancing around her fingers. "Yes, I am! Always up for a bit of adventure. Bit of exploration and all that." She waved her hand to remove the fire and trotted over. "Where do I sign up? Right here?"

edited 18th Sep '14 4:01:19 PM by Tools

ಠ_ಠ

"Yeah, like Urthslid demonstrated." Claudia nodded in acknowledgement, gesturing to the scroll with names on it. They could surely use someone with some control over fire.

grah

Amber wrote her name on the scroll, dotting the "i" of her surname with a flame symbol. It was old habit of hers that started when her powers first materialised. She got into trouble for it growing up, but still continued to it. Once her name was signed, Amber created another fireball, playing with it as she walked away.

ಠ_ಠ

A minotaur trotted up to the stand, heaving a giant ox cart behind him. Then he continued on his path towards a few dozen more meters.

He stopped all of a sudden, looking back curiously with a confused look on his face, then looking forward, and finally back again. He stared at the sign for a moment and the look vanished, and he pushed backwards against the cart to shove it back near the stand.

He stomped over to Claudia and looked down at her, taking a deep breath. "GREETINGS TINY HUMAN, I AM HERE TO GO ON AN EXPEDITION!"

"Alright. If you have any baggage, the expedition's belongings are over there." Claudia gestured to the various pile of odds and ends a short distance away from the stand.

And then came the minotaur declaring his willingness to join the party. A bit too loudly for her taste. "Greetings, giant minotaur, you are very much welcome to join." She deadpanned, pointing to Urthslid's scroll. "What can you bring to the expedition with yourself apart from that cart?"

grah

"Oh, yes let me sign that for you." Wheezed Osmund as he began scrawling his name onto the scroll. Osmund's name was nearly illegible, but that didn't matter to Osmund. With his name inscribed on the sheet, Osmund was finally able to notice the Minotaur who wanted to join the expedition. Instead of fulfilling his wish to discuss Typhus with the new arrival, Osmund chose to stand slightly off to the side of the recruitment stand in the hopes that he might be able to discuss Typhus with a random passerby or convince them to join the expedition.

Urthslid watched as Osmund and Amber signed then departed, nodding to the elf by way of greetings, only to turn back to see a minotaur heading their way.

Nervously backing away from the bullman as he approached the stand, Urthslid hastily put away his red rosary and tried not to make eye-contact when Claudia pointed to him, frozen in place with his tail-held staff quavering slightly. "N-not th-that you need anything beyond your fine cart." he weakly chimed in.

"I AM KIRKADARAN, CRAFTSMAN OF CLAN SKULLTHRASHER," the minotaur replied. "I WIELD GRAMDLARG AND BUGNERYS, BUT IN YOUR TONGUE, THEY ARE CALLED BIG HAMMER AND BIG AXE. I BEND STEEL AND WOOD AND STONE TO MY WILL, SO THAT YOU NEED NOT FEAR YOUR ARSENAL KNOWING THE TASTE OF RUST OR ROT, ONLY THE BLOOD OF YOUR ENEMIES."

While the bull-man had been making his blustering pronouncement Eidny Jenos had come up.

"Are you quite done, my large friend? If so I would like to make my own application." This was said in the minotaur's native speech.

Trump delenda est

Amber hopped into the minotaur's cart, doing daintly little cartwheels around the edge. "So..." She said, perched on the a corner of the cart on her tiptoes, "When do we set off?"

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"If you could tone down your voice a little bit, that would be greatly appreciated." Claudia responded, giving a small, satisfied glance at Urthslid's reluctance to deal with the minotaur. "But yeah, that seems about right for an application. Sign your name on Urthslid's scroll if you could and set down your stuff over there with the others."

Then came the new man. Well well, seems like a single priest of Typhus was more than enough to attract attention. "Oi, talk Universal if you could." She addressed him seeing as he was apparently trying to show off his language proficiency. "Anyway, yeah, we're still looking for folks. What do you offer?"

Then the question from the elf girl. "We should be departing the next day, most likely. I'll be staying 'round to see if there's going to be more people applying, but otherwise we go by the sun's dawn."

grah

"Well, I speak and read several languages including ( fill in this world's equivalents of Latin and Classical Greek) Which I'm guessing might be useful if we're to be mucking about in ruins, I write a fine hand, am more than capable with crossbow and spear and not too bad with a sword. I can play guitar and flute and can ride a horse as well as anyone you care to test me against." Eidny finished his little speech with a bow and a flourish of his cape. Because of course he was wearing a cape.

edited 21st Sep '14 12:34:36 PM by tricksterson

Trump delenda est

"SIGN?" Kirk asked. He looked at the paper and nodded, sticking his left thumb in his mouth. He bit down to break the skin and placed a bloody thumbprint on the scroll.

"WAIT, WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY CART?" he added, looking back at his cart.

The snakeman relaxed a little as the bullman focused his attention elsewhere and moved to offer Eidny ink & quill. "Are you student of the classicss? Both storiess and songss will do much to relieve the dullnesss of the journey." He held out the scroll while keeping an eye on Kirkadaran.

"Old languages might come in handy, considering where we are going, true." Claudia nodded approvingly. "Write your name under Mr. Kirkadaran's signature, if you will."

"In any case..." Miss Carreau glanced over people gathered. "Seems we're having a pretty extraordinary party here."

grah

Eidny signed although he was temtped to check the fine print first.

Trump delenda est

Urthslid quickly retracted the scroll as soon as Eidny had signed it, a little too quickly. He gave it a brief look-over. "Well, now... I think thiss iss... all the signaturess we were needing, Misss Carreau. Would you care to double-check it?" He said, handing it to her.

Claudia nodded, taking the scroll from the snakeman and examining it briefly. There was no real point in checking this again, but hey, why not humor him?

"Looking good, all applications." She said, putting the scroll away. "Well, that about covers it. We should be venturing out by tomorrow morning, so if there's anything else you need to do before that, go ahead." Former Paladin gave a look to this newly-formed expedition body, sighing in her mind. It hasn't been this colorful since her days as a holy knight back in a day.

---

True to the word of Claudia Carreau, the morning was the time the expedition began its life.

"Alright, ladies and gentlemen!" The woman exclaimed, her sword hidden within the sheath on her back as the wolf-shaped shoulder pads blazed with fire. "We're moving out!"

In front of the party grew the endless desert...

grah