Kiyoka

[Sareth]

How did he know it was Wraiths, I found myself wondering. If it was a guess, it was more perceptive than I cared for. And it it wasn't a guess...

Quietly, I reached into my clothes to cock the other pistol. This might be a short trip.

As I slowly began aiming my weapons from beneath my clothing, a scream rang out. This prompted me to go ahead and return the pistols to their concealed slings, as screams usually got people excited, and excited people attracted the attention of authorities, and I liked as much of a head start on running away as I could get. I'd just have to kill this guide later. Maybe.

[DarkIntruder]

Roger had been able to conceal the scattergun before they stepped out into the main congregation, but it had been a near thing. He wished people would warn him of what might be on the other side of a door, before he stepped out wielding such firepower. Such things tended to attract too much attention, but the point appeared to be moot now.

With the sound of the explosion and the horrid scream, the mass of people crowded into the basement began to become agitated, and move. As he followed their guide illusion , Roger saw a man dressed in the characteristic robes of a Veracian priest ascend the steps of the small pulpit at the front of the room. Raising his hands above him, he motioned for quiet, and began to speak.

"People, people, please be calm! There is nothing to fear, for our great Lord and Savior Luminosita will protect this congregation from any harm that may befall it. We need only to send our prayers to him, and his divine Might will usher the darkness away. Please, remain here, and remain penitent. He is watching over us, and his Reach is long indeed. This will all be sorted out."



As the people around him began to kneel and pray, Roger spotted the mysterious cloaked man about to slip away. He walked over and placed a firm hand on the man's shoulder. Roger could feel the tenseness in his skinny frame, even through the heavy clothing.

"Hold on a minute there" Roger said. "No need to go off all half-cocked. I'm sure something will come up that'll allow us to slip out of here."

As if on cue, the priest raised his hands again, and spoke: "We will all now show our gratitude and praise for the great Luminosita, by singing one of the great hymns in his name. Let us sing, "Luminosita's Divinity is much greater than thou."

The entire congregation rose, and began to sing in unison, though most was dreadfully off-key and out of time.

[Graybeard]

Of course, Grope thought to himself. The body was still in the alley; he had had neither time nor inclination to do anything about it. With the streets starting to fill up, someone had wandered close enough to notice it, had gone to investigate, and was having what was actually a pretty reasonable reaction, when you think about it.

Trolls generally seek neither allies nor enemies among the Small Ones, preferring to let them live their short, mystifying lives in their own world and only clashing with them when they threaten the Tribe. However, he'd learned enough in his wandering to know that the Veracian Church were very definitely not his friends, even under the best of circumstances, and there was something very unusual about this particular mission. He really wanted to stay and figure out what it was. However, the scene below was getting wild enough that there was a real chance he'd be discovered if he stayed around. He realized that it was time to move on.

He moved as quickly as stealth allowed to the far corner of the building, making sure to avoid the creaky timber he'd almost fallen through earlier. The mission building was quite a bit bigger than it looked at first, and that got him thinking as he jogged along. Certainly the small number of Veracian priests and nuns, and the near-zero number of locals, that he'd seen entering the building didn't justify a compound anywhere near this large. So if the big building wasn't there to do the things a mission does (if he understood the alien concept correctly), what was it there for? He didn't have time to pursue the thought, as he reached his goal and the prospect of escape.

The street beside the mission was fairly wide and full of people, many of them moving briskly toward where the scream had come from. Using it for his escape route wouldn't do. However, directly behind the mission was a much narrower street, really just another alley, and nobody was in it yet that he could see. Better still, the building across the alley had a roof at about the same level as the mission, and looked substantial enough to hold his weight. He quickly made his decision: stay on the rooftops as long as possible, get out of town and spend the night in the forest, then return the next day for reconnaissance if the coast was clear. He found a convenient point on the roof where he could jump the alley, briefly touched the Robe, and prepared to jump. But just as he soared across the alley, he realized that this wasn't going to be as easy as he'd hoped.

Directly beneath him, and unseen from where he'd paused to check out the situation, was a young, maybe teenaged, male Small One wearing the uniform-robe of a Tsuirakuan battlemage. He'd apparently been running toward the scene with the dead mercenary. And he was carrying a large, ornate staff that he was waving wildly -- until he saw movement overhead. He was still too confused and frightened to aim, but military drill and conditioning took over.

The boy raised the staff and screeched a single, incomprehensible word. And Grope's world was filled with sound and light as he reached the other building and ran.

[Graybeard]

[OOC: Sorry about the double post, but hey, got a day off, may as well enjoy it...]

As Grope's head cleared and it started to rain hard, he realized he'd been extremely lucky, but he'd actually been even luckier than he realized.

He smelled the strangely unpleasant odor of burnt Small One flesh behind him, and he realized that the Small One with the staff was no longer a threat to him -- to put it mildly. The young fool had simply fired the staff using whatever setting it happened to be on at the time. If the setting had been Fireball (and he knew from the little skirmish at Noferadu that it was possible), the result for Grope would have been the end of a long troll life, under conditions particularly repellent to his kind. But with the setting on Lightning Bolt, the life that came to a premature end was not the troll's. He didn't know why things had worked out that way, but he was grateful to the Five Great Mothers that they had, whatever the reason was.

(Grope had no way to know it, but his late antagonist hadn't been the first battlemage to meet his end via this particular mishap. One of the things that they teach during basic training for the Tsuirakuan military is that it is a very, very, VERY bad idea to use the Lightning Bolt function on a Yuuki Staff against an overhead target when there is a chance of rain. A terminally bad idea. The problem is that there is a risk of setting up a harmonic interaction with the gathering electrical charge in the clouds that produces a backflash that incinerates the Staff and its wielder. And that was just what had happened here; the clouds that form over a coastal town, with mountains in the background, as it begins to cool down after sunset provide more than enough stuff in the air for the beam to interact with, even if they normally offer little prospect of rain. Alas, the boy hadn't been listening during that day of weapons training. The resulting pieces of charred flesh in the alley were going to provide sustenance for the town vermin for some time, and a later investigation would puzzle over the fried remains of the Yuuki Staff -- but that's a different story.)

Still, magical menace or no magical menace, it was time to get out of town. He slowed to a stealthier gait and kept moving, as the sounds of weird, cacophonous singing emanated from the mission.

[Viking-Sensei]

"Bad things are going to start happening if we don't get out of here shortly..." Lucas muttered. "We need a diversion... Alright, Bob, Plan 27-A."

Bob, normally emotionless and only sort of interrested in his surroundings, suddenly looked horrified. "27-A? You're kidding, right?"

Lucas shook his head solmnly. "Nope. We're headed for the docks, catch up as soon as you can." He whipped around to his travelling party. "This... will not be pleasant. When it starts, everybody back slowly and as unsuspiciously as possible towards the fifth street entrance. Whatever you do... don't laugh, they probably won't take that very well."

Bob hover-flew straight up, a grey streak amongst the grey and dingy walls... landed on a ceiling support beam, and gingerly walked across the wooden plank towards the front of the hall that the faithful (and the not-so-faithful) had gathered in. Inching slowly down the corresponding support beam along the wall, Bob dropped stealthily down behind the large and imposing visiage of Luminosita that adorned the wall behind the raised chorus that was leading the sing along. As the music died, suddenly the room was filled with a great rumbling...

"I AM THE VOICE OF LUMINOSITA. YOU, MY FOLLOWERS IN THE CITY OF KIYOKA HAVE BEEN JUDGED... UNWORTHY! REPENT, FOR MY JUDGEMENT IS SWIFT AND SURE!

A heavy hush fell over the congregation... a moment of wondering if they'd heard what they just heard, or if it was some sort of sick joke... then, in the alley outside, lightning struck and a loud anguished and very authentic sounding scream echoed between the buildings. Taking it as a sure sign that Lumi had come for them personally, the room exploded into chaos as nuns and priests were suddenly scrambling over one another, each attempting to prove themselves more worthy by not being the ones to get cooked. "Damn, Bob, laying it on a little thick, aren't you? I didn't know you could cast lightning..."

Lucas started his feint back towards the door... but the faithful, thinking that the doors of their own church might be a safe haven against an angry god, were already barricading the door. Ayiee, still in Nun garb, saw the problem and acted... by knocking a significant portion of the south wall of the church down with one massive kick. "It is time - to go!"

[Graybeard]

The singing stopped abruptly and gave way to a cacophony of shouts and screams. Or was there really a difference? Grope couldn't be sure; he didn't really understand Small Ones' singing, and maybe all the screaming was just part of the song. No, those were really screams, and now he heard a new and different sound, the racket of a wall in the mission building collapsing messily. Well, that pretty well sealed it, he thought as he ran; time to be somewhere else.

He hurdled another street/alley, getting a glimpse as he went of two figures huddled under a streetlight just turning on that he thought might be George and Curley, although he didn't take the time to be sure. They weren't paying attention to him, so he returned the favor and kept moving. The next street was too wide to leap, but it seemed to be empty, so he dropped to street level and sprinted for the outskirts of town.

Even a troll gets tired after running hard enough for long enough. He paused, panting, and noticed that it wasn't raining any more -- nor, to all appearances, had it ever been here, where town meets country. The rainfall had been unnaturally localized to the vicinity of the lightning bolt that fried the battlemage. He was well enough attuned to the nuances of nature (that was what Many Fathers Wisdom was about, wasn't it?) to find this odd, and he resolved to investigate it the next day when he went back to check on the mission. Now, however, was not the time. He looked about him while he caught his breath...

... And realized to his chagrin that he wasn't where he thought he was. He'd intended to head west from the mission, through farmland and into the forest, where he would hole up for the night. Trolls don't have much to fear from forest predators; the only one large enough (at least the only natural one) to pose a threat to an adult male troll is a cave bear, and Grope knew from his explorations that the Kiyokans had wiped out all of those in the vicinity of the town. However, disoriented and hurried because of the chaos at the mission, he'd run south. That put him at the edge of the city docks, with the forest still some distance away. He swore quietly to himself and hid as best he could, while he got his bearings.

In the distance, somewhere within the dock complex, a dog barked, and a light came on.

[Sareth]

Contemplating the hole in the wall, the screaming croud, the voice-throwing flying cat, blue toned fakegirl and the hand on my shoulder, I came to a conclusion.

These people are crazy.

Still, crazy or no, they seemed to be moving in the right direction. And they were creating enough chaos that anyone with business with me would make themselved obvious by not observing the brownian motion known as PANIC. This was good.

I brushed the hand off my shoulder and stepped forward, picking my way through the rubble. I kept one hand in my cloak, ready to produce one of my pistols if needed, but freed the other lest a misstep dump me on the ground. That would prove rather awkward.

Outside was an image of chaos. Passerbys were hurrying away from the rubble that had been a wall. Two shady characters were lounging under a newly lighting streetlap, looking distinctly confused. And for some reason...

"Does anyone else smell burnt pork?" I asked, sniffing, then looked down at my feet. "Oh... Never mind." I stepped over the charred remains of a battlemage staff and into the street. "So... Which way are these docks you were talking about?"

[Graybeard]

With the business with the Veracian mission on hold (although he still wanted to know why it was staffed with what looked like a military special-forces unit), Grope got back to the main task at hand: looking for his mate, or at least for information that might point to her, or to what had happened to her ... not that he wanted to think in those terms, but let's be realistic. Zhbrigeeul, he thought as he caressed the Robe, where are you? Why can't you send a mind-signal that the Many Fathers can hear? Speak to me! But no answer came from the Robe, just as none had come for the last three years.

The distant light went out and the dog stopped barking, but another light at the end of a wharf came on, and Grope could hear Small Ones talking. Well, that was both good and bad. Apparently he was at the end of the dock district that catered to small craft, maybe pleasure boats, rather than commercial vessels. The good part was that maybe Mr. Stagpoole, the Small One who'd helped him get into the Tsuiraku islands, would still be alive and able to help him again; he'd based his operation on an innocent-looking sport-fishing boat that had ... interesting ... fittings below decks, and this was the kind of area that he'd call home. The bad news was that he'd have to move carefully to check it out, because people who could afford pleasure boats could also afford guards and magical sentry systems. He decided to risk an inspection of the docks, as soon as it got dark enough that he could move unseen. While he waited, he caught dinner: a large jellyfish (its tentacles caused his hand to itch slightly as stinging cells fired, but nothing he hadn't dealt with before) and two or three small fish that he scooped expertly from the water, then devoured whole. No point in doing the Many Fathers Wisdom ritual with these; the jellyfish didn't even have a mind, and a fish stupid enough to get caught by a terrestrial predator didn't have much Wisdom worth gaining. With the edge off his hunger and darkness around him, he started to reconnoiter the docks.

However, he didn't get very far before his plan took a major hit, as had been happening with a lot of his plans lately. Barely a hundred yards from where he caught the jellyfish, he skulked along the shore through a section of brushy vegetation at waterside -- and tripped headlong over a sleeping Small One who'd been wrapped around a whiskey bottle and simply crashed out in the brush when the whiskey took over. He regained his feet soon enough, but in the process, left himself silhouetted against the light from the main part of town, as the drunk woke up and sobered up quickly. The man scrambled to his knees, looked up at the immense form towering over him, let out a scream, and bolted inland before Grope could stop him. Lights came on all over the docks.

Hmmm, Grope reflected. Did you ever have one of those days?...

[DarkIntruder]

When their guide told them it would not be pleasant, Roger believed him, and had thought himself prepared for whatever high-jinks would ensue. But he had not been prepared for THAT! Between the booming voice, the massive wave of humanity that was presently prostrating itself before the altar, and the crazy nun thing kicking a hole in the wall, Roger was more then a little perturbed.


And that was even before he stepped out into the street, and noticed the pair of shady men under the street light. In the gathering dusk, Roger couldn't make out their faces, but their manner and clothing was familiar enough. These were two of the bastards that were after him. Goddammit, why could he not shake these guys?

Keeping his head down, he placed the various members of their group now exiting the hole between himself and the pair, hoping that they would not notice him. If they could just get to the docks, then he could leave this whole experience behind him.

As the group approached the pair, Roger slowly reached beneath his coat to grasp the shortened stock of the scattergun. Glancing around, he noticed the cloaked and hooded man(?) staring at him. Roger gave him a meaningful look, and made a nearly imperceptible nod towards the two thugs.

Hopefully the man(?) would catch it.

[OOC] Who's up for a running gunfight in the street? I can probably blow one away instantly. Which one? [/OOC]

[Graybeard]

[OOC] Who's up for a running gunfight in the street? I can probably blow one away instantly. Which one? [/OOC]

[OOC: I've provided some info on "Curley" and "George" in the accompanying NPC Gallery thread, for you-all to use as you see fit. They're disposable ... Grope is already at the docks and won't be participating, however.]