CMP

:laugh: That would be the best plot twist ever. Heroican Foreigner Gambles his Way to the Throne, all Hail King Boomingham!

"I had to get out of the Hovels at some point. I found work on an independent shipping vessel. Worked my way up the ranks, made a lot of contacts, and then the majority of the crew ended up dying in a pirate attack. Most parted ways after that, but not me: I ended up with the ship, repainted it, got a new crew, here I am. Probably not as exciting as how heroes get recruited, but there you are." '<She's who I was talking to, Mister Dragoon. Not everything's about you, heheh.>' "And that's why I appreciate your group. The Houses are too outdated. They don't care about the common people. That's why we ought to be rid of them." "I imagine we just...step on a square. We need to find a path to the opposite side of the room." "Sure, but I can't exactly solo the rest of this thing, we need to find a path for all of us to get through."

What if Heckz decides to camp out after this battle? This quest is going to make the fabric of time weep.

Interesting. If Black Widow and the secondary Avengers team all side with Cap, that'll leave Iron Man's group a bit light (if I know anything about Civil War, anyway.) I kind of thought they were done with Hawkeye after AoU. Is Black Panther being introduced here, or does he have his own film beforehand?

"Hm. Thanks for the help then, mate." Atramor shuffles over to the rest of the party in wait for them to regroup.

I'll respond to the conversations (and also update stats) tomorrow. The party heads to the kitchen. The room is...surprisingly well-lit and appears more or less intact. Illdria frowns intently. "This is..." "Too easy?" "Too easy. This room's been tampered with. We ought to take things slow. Who would've rigged this place, and for what purpose?" -KITCHEN CRAWL- The kitchen is divided into a 6x6 grid (top left square is A1, bottom right is F6). Some tiles will be trapped. These traps immediately reduce the hero to one health, and they cannot continue until they have been restored to full health. When a hero moves to a square on the grid, the number of traps in the surrounding eight squares will be revealed. Heroes cannot move into tiles with furniture, but they can be searched for loot. They can, however, also be trapped. Magnifying glasses reveal one random trap in the surrounding eight squares, but cannot be used once a trap within its range has already been revealed. The heroes begin at the bottom row. The goal is to find a path to reach the top row.

Yes, edited. Omen eyes Torc right back. '<Is he always like this?>' he joked, licking a paw yet again. "Aye, usually how I think too. Not much anyone can do about the past now, ye know?" "Eheh, probably. This tech and magic and such goes right over my head, and, erm, I'd like to keep it that way, but I don't think I need these Crimson fellows o tell me that." "That might even sound worse, no offense. But I suppose a lot of the fallout from your work gets left up to you. But perhaps I'm not flexible enough, in that regard. I'd've killed the kidnapper without a second thought, most likely."

Seems too generic.

"Now hold on, hold on mate. I don't mean to hold up what's surely a slew of dwarves hungry for these delectable slimy water wyrms. Maybe I'll compensate ya' a bit for your time." Atarmor slipped the fishmonger ten gold. "And maybe you'll be a little more agreeable, and your line can hold its unicorns for a bit."

I'm still having trouble deciphering it...very tricky.

I still haven't had time to build this next set, sorry. So, brief roleplaying break... "We plan to have people to trust in themselves, not in deities who don't care whether or not we slaughter eachother in their names." "Waiting around for some higher power to give us justification will get us nowhere. Every being should seize destiny for themselves, not wait for it to be given. We are committed to our path." "Leave me, then. Magic has done more than enough to me." "Don't feed me that nonsense. As I understand Jaret is trying to help modernize Baltarok, we're not around to incite wars. Did you see a single one of our combatants there? "We don't sit around and wait to be 'appointed' to do anything. We recognize the dangers these things face, and we act. Who appointed Heroica to decide what's good and what's bad? Nobody. Your founders saw what needed to be done, and they did it. Just because a god doesn't do it doesn't mean it shouldn't be done." The man shook his head and dug around in his pockets for intact potions as the party left, headed for the kitchens. Melvin frowned, scratching his beard, and he looked over at Thalion, Em, and Hybros. "They, eh, sure do like to.....show up. A lot." The dwarven cook bit his lip. "Ye know, I don't get like getting caught up in the crazy masked supremacist business, and they did try and kill ye once, but damned if they weren't right about that...what was it, picbox?" Melvin shook his head. "But I was raised right and proper to believe in Orrik and Mythra. Don't see no harm in that, meself. Hell, I hate thinking about this kind of thing. Makes yer mind wander. What do you think about all this business?" Meanwhile, Captain Illdria walks alongside Guts, Mizuki, Dyric, and Erik, looking unimpressed by the conversations flying about. "These Crimson fools and Cold whatever turn up far too often for my liking. If they want to kill eachother so damn badly, they can at least do it elsewhere. Getting people caught in the middle of it all this philosophy is pointless, nobody seems to understand that some people could not care less and just want to go about living and doing what they like. Do you deal with their types often?" She rolled her eyes. "How Heroica puts up with it I'll never understand. I'd make a terrible hero. No patience for this garbage." Meanwhile, Omen continued to slink along around Hoke's legs. '<So tell me Mister Dragoon who's so fed up with poor Omen's games. What's in this vision of yours? How much trouble has dear master gotten himself into? Nothing too serious I hope. I'm sure it's almost deathly serious, but I can hope otherwise. That's what hope is for. It's a silly thing. Sometimes helpful though. I just want to know if I need to start having dwarfy feed me my fishes instead.>'

Sorry, I've been quite busy today - I will update tomorrow.

Atramor approaches the Teuthisal. " 'Scuse me, ya' know where I can find a Ms. Thisbeen 'round here?"

It attracts a few harsh looks from the survivor, but Hoke pries the gloves off one of the bodies. Sterile Gloves (Immune to poisoned and bleeding, handwear, suitable for anyone) "The Cardinal is picky about who she hires. I imagine she wanted to test you, make sure you were worth hiring again if needed. If it helps, getting the Blue Assassins off our back was pretty damn helpful." "We're certainly not a religious group. Ethics fits better. We're an ancient organization whose sole purpose, essentially, is to make sure the world advances at a sustainable pace. There are a lot of trappings we could do without when it comes to improving the future of our world. Example. Magic. It's too dangerous. Every few years someone pops up trying to become a god or threatening to tear holes in the fabric of the universe, and the only thing that enables that kind of power is magic. You're always going to have crazy people, but at least without magic we won't have crazy mages. There's also a lot of advanced technology around that could threaten the natural order of things. Take a look at what all these automatons and airships are doing to Xu. The most we're willing to use is alchemy. Some of the higher-ups suspect Ji Pei is literally ahead of our time. That could be a major issue. And of course there's the gods. Relics we should've grown out of centuries ago. These are the things impeding our natural advancements, and without them, maybe the world can be just a little bit less chaotic. You wouldn't even believe how much progress we've made." "Since you asked." The 'eye' was more a metal 'patch' than anything. The man frowned and scratched his chin.

The man helps push the rocks off of his legs as well, and with Em's help the stone pillar is lifted enough for him to drag himself out from underneath the rubble. One his legs is badly broken. "Thanks for that." " 'A whole lot of trouble'. Like what? I'm not even part of that sect. As far as the Masked Man goes, you know damn well that whole thing was a farce. He was trying to put out some sort of immortality elixir. If anyone was capable of that, it was the Guild, and do you have any idea how much damage a potion like that could do if it got out into the wild? Then there was that whole thing with your damn camera, you can ask these three how that went," he jerked his head towards Em, Hybros, and Melvin. "My guys are all right here." The man jams a thumb over his shoulder at the Crimson Crown men buried under the rubble. "Everyone else still here are the people Melville was able to put under his control. It wasn't a perfect spell, and there were those who resisted. He had them killed by their own allies." "I'm not going anywhere with a leg like this. What trouble do I have to cause? Unless you were going to leave the power-mad necromancers alive before you left, our goals are as aligned as they can be. I imagine you've all been screwed over by us a few times, but we need to maintain connections around Olegaia to respond quickly to threats like these. Even if it went bad this time." "It's not as though you have that threat hanging over my head anymore, but what kind of information are you looking for? We had a threat level analysis for this place but that went out the window when we learned the Cold Circle had vampires here. They tend to be pretty high-level operatives. They're allying with Melville for some reason and they're likely the ones maintaining this mind control spell."

"Can you get me out of here and fix my leg first? I'd hate to bleed out in the middle of my interrogation." The man replied, with a wince.

Glad to see you back DLL. Check the Heroica Statistics topic, we post stats there and then link to the stats post in your signature.

The man looked down at the gleaming point of the scythe and shivered. "Same as you, I'd guess. I heard fighting a while ago." He glanced sideways at Captain Illdria. "Slaughtering Bonapartes is kind of your thing, yeah? Did you realize they were allied with the Cold Circle before, or after you killed them all?" "I'm told purging your lessers is what your group does, actually." "Don't be so idealistic, you're starting to sound like Heroica. This atrocity is exactly the kind of thing we try to prevent." The man struggled under the rubble. "One of our spies reported the Cold Circle had contacts within Melville's ranks. We infiltrated them as well. Apparently he got paranoid, trying to control the minds of his own people, so we attempted to strike first. We thought we had the element of surprise. You can see how well that went."

Miderun slunk back into the hall after the long journey back from her most recent quest, ignoring the bar, quest board, and other heroes for once and proceeding straight to an empty table. She sat down, clasped her hands in what looked like a prayer, and fell silent for quite some time.

The party heads down towards the kitchen. They head past the mystery room and the stairs - but as they passed the latter, a pained groan escaped from what was, based on what they'd seen above, a collapsed ruin. The captain frowned, and pulled open the door to the room as they passed by, without waiting for input. There the heroes found a sight that was to many of them probably entirely unsurprising. Men in red, black, and white robes and clothing lie crushed under whatever had collapsed the stairs, and seemed to have been there at least a day or so, judging by the stench. Regardless, one of them managed to cling to life, a young man who looked liked he'd been struggling for a rather long period of time underneath the rubble. He looked up at the heroes just outside and sighed under his breath. "Well.....hell."

Guts begins the arduous task of unearthing an entire stairwell with a pickaxe.

Atramor pulls a Smelling Salts out of his coat. "So this'd cover that Scroll of Translation, then? Could come in handy in this line of work. As a bodyguard." "Rats. Just...yeah. Of course. Rats." Atramor sighs as if in resignation.

"Sounds about right." "Got thrown in here almost as soon as I got here. Kept me fed...at first. No questions or anythin'. Not sure what they even wanted!" "A...vision? That sounds like something Jules would be involved in." Illdria sighed. "But...he's tough. I'm sure he can hold up to whatever that bastard is trying. Let's not make him wait, though." "Sure, if ye like." The party moves to the stairs just to the side of the cells, but they, too, were collapsed. This one, however, appeared different, a cannonball lodged in the rubble that appeared oddly smooth, as if cement had been poured down onto them. "Strange. They blew up their own stairwell and then dumped concrete into it?" "Seems like they didn't care for Jolly Roger's renovations, hehah!" "Or like we're being deliberately funneled somewhere." The captain frowns and rubs her chin in thought.

Witch Vindsval looks freakin' awesome. :thumbup: