Family Matters (AshPrince) GMed by Hafnium

[Hafnium]

Re: Family Matters (AshPrince) GMed by Hafnium

Spoiler

Elizabeth Silver: HP = 39/53, PP = 41, EP = 38, Status = Slightly bludgeoned, Grappled

NPCs
Alice: Fine, Full Defense.
Karina: Very much not fine.
Ruby: Moderate wounds, 10:10 Defensive Fighting

Rolls

Spoiler

Elizabeth (Grapple Attempt)
Attack: Hit. He's grappled, still struggling though.

Ruby uses shattering blow and 10:10 defensive fighting.
Attack: Hit.
Damage: 5 + 18 - 10 - 1 = 12 * 2 = 24.

Alice continues to use full defense, as she remains sans weapon.

One of the refugees attempts to smack Elizabeth in the back.
Attack: Hit.
Damage: 12 - 10 = 2 damage.

Three continue to fight Alice
Attacks: All miss again, surprisingly.

Two attack Ruby
Attacks: Both miss, courtesy of defensive fighting.

Elizabeth's efforts to take the head dissenter hostage ended in her grappling with the leader. He desperately attempted to keep both of her blades away from his vitals, grabbing at her wrists and trying to keep them clear of his bits. He was strong, but no stronger than the rogue. If she could get him into a submission hold she would have her hostage, but it seemed that only luck would determine which of the two came out on top.

The refugee attempting to aid his leader took a swing at the occupied noblewoman's back, which felt like a child hitting her thanks to her armor. Alice continued to fend off three attackers with an impressive amount of grace, ducking and backing away as they swung wildly at her with their clubs. Ruby ducked a swing of her own and connected her elbow with her other assailant's stomach, causing him to double over in pain. Things were going better for the assassin's group.

Spoiler

Enemies:
1 Head Dissenter (grappling with Elizabeth)
6 Dissenters (1 engaging Elizabeth, 3 engaging Alice, 2 engaging Ruby).
1 Dead or Unconscious Dissenter.

 

[AshPrince]

Re: Family Matters (AshPrince) GMed by Hafnium

Elizabeth let the worm wriggle in her grasp; and then decided it wasn’t time to be playful and sought to still him, not forever preferably; but if it couldn’t be avoided. “Hold still if you want your throat intact, you know how shaky a woman’s grip can be.” She had to admit; teasing him was fun. She brought one blade toward his throat, while tucking the other behind his back, more or less ignoring the assaults of the feeble man attempting to; do whatever it was he intended to do by hitting her with a club.

<attempt submission hold>

 

[Hafnium]

Re: Family Matters (AshPrince) GMed by Hafnium

Spoiler

Elizabeth Silver: HP = 39/53, PP = 41, EP = 38, Status = Slightly bludgeoned, Grappled

NPCs
Alice: Fine, Full Defense.
Karina: Very much not fine.
Ruby: Moderate wounds, 10:10 Defensive Fighting

Rolls

Spoiler

Grapple: Success. The refugee leader is now in a submission hold.

With a little more struggling, the noblewoman managed to put her blade to the man's throat, causing him to cease his struggles. As a bonus, she had finally managed to put a look of true panic on the man's face. The dissenters were apparently loyal enough that they stopped attempting to bludgeon the trio of women. Each of the men backed away cautiously, clubs still in hand, which allowed Elizabeth's retinue to move to her side, guarding her flank in the event that any tried to club the woman into releasing her new hostage.

Beyond the refugee laying on the ground, either dead or unconscious, and the sobbing psychic curled into a ball near a crate, Elizabeth had apparently managed to get the situation under control without much mess. Now the entire room waited anxiously for what she would do next.

 

[AshPrince]

Re: Family Matters (AshPrince) GMed by Hafnium

“Now then.” Elizabeth smirked. “Alice, would you be a dear and retrieve our swords from these nice men? Oh, and boys, do be careful handing them over, we wouldn’t want anyone getting cut now would we?” She raised the blade to press just against the dissenter leader’s throat, not enough to actually nick him, as long as he didn’t squirm too much, but enough to get her ‘point’ across. “Now,” Elizabeth leaned in pressing her chest up against her prisoner’s back, leaning her chin in over his chest as she looked him in the eye, through the corner of her vision. “Let’s talk.”

“I’m going to do something that I don’t normally do; be honest with you.” She had to grin at the how often she was saying that these days. “You raise some good points, and there are more than a few questions I’d like answered myself; but even you have to respect that there is a time and a place for everything, and that this is neither the time nor the place for this.” She lowered the knife from the thug-leader’s neck, not letting him go, but easing up on the pressure a bit. “Can we all at least agree on that?” She looked around the room.

 

[Hafnium]

Re: Family Matters (AshPrince) GMed by Hafnium

Spoiler

Elizabeth Silver: HP = 39/53, PP = 41, EP = 38, Status = Slightly bludgeoned, Grappled

NPCs
Alice: Fine.
Karina: Very much not fine.
Ruby: Fine.

Alice did as requested, even going so far as to glower at the refugees, and actually managing to make one back away, as she retrieved the weapons. Ruby cast a few spells upon herself while the rogue interrogated, causing injuries to vanish and further intimidating the group of men with the idea that one of the noblewoman's number was a mage—one could only imagine their reaction if Karina wasn't quite so catatonic.

Aside from a loud swallow, the assassin received little answer from her hostage at first. He didn't seem to appreciate how often she had been given the chance to tell truths after the world had seemingly been flipped upside down. And, if he hadn't had a knife pointed at his vitals, he didn't seem the kind to appreciate that there was a time or place for anything. The threat of violence made him a little bit more reasonable, at least, even if it did stymie his ability to answer her. She only managed to get a single syllable out of him after the deadly edge had stopped nuzzling his skin. "S-sure," he responded, much more nervously than he had before, and the group of dissenters echoed it uncertainly as they waited for Elizabeth's next words.

By then, Elizabeth's new sister had rearmed herself. With the slightly trained handmaiden and a fully healthy Ruby, the situation was coming more and more into her control for the Silver woman.

 

[AshPrince]

Re: Family Matters (AshPrince) GMed by Hafnium

"Now," Elizabeth began with the poise and force that seemed to come so naturally to those of noble blood. "I would like to propose something I expect to be mutually benefital; but first, I do believe that you owe my friend here," she nodded to Karina, "an apology." Elizabeth nudged her knives up against her hostage's throat, just encase anyone might have been thinking about refusing her request. "So, apologize." She smirked a litte leaning to one side so that her prisoner might look his would-have-been-victim in the face, and then she very calmly stood there, knives at his throat, and waited for him, and at least some of his horde to apologize to her friend.

She wasn't sure how much would get through to Karina but it was the thought that counted, plus she had a man who had soughtto see her strip at knife point, the more she could humble him the better. "There, now that we're all friends again, I would like to build upon our friendship. I mentioned there are questions I want answered, and I believe you share my sentiment in that, however; nether of us are in quite the position to investigate, and thus I propose a partnership, one that will prove immediately beneficial for you, my friend." She leaned in against her hostage and whispered in his ear. "That means I'm not going to kill you." She enjoyed taunting her prisoner, you had to enjoy the little things in life, but it was time to get back to business. "There was an envoy from my father; the Lord Sliver, shortly before my own arrival, Obrin or some such name. I don't know him, and given the timing I can't help but be suspicious. I however cannot be seen to question my father, so my proposition; you men will become my personal guardsmen, there will be a place for you in service to house Silver and if the soldiers here question you you will send them to me. You will investigate this Obrin and do so quietly. Whatever you find you will bring to me, or my sister." She nodded toward Alice. "You will do this for me and do it well. Serve me as you would your Lord and I will grant you boons no Lord ever could." Or at least Ruby would, no sense in letting horny men go to waste when you had a succubus in your employ. "Do we have an agreement?"

 

[Hafnium]

Re: Family Matters (AshPrince) GMed by Hafnium

Spoiler

Elizabeth Silver: HP = 39/53, PP = 41, EP = 38, Status = Slightly bludgeoned, Grappled

NPCs
Alice: Fine.
Karina: Very much not fine.
Ruby: Fine.

Rolls

Spoiler

Perception: 5.

"O-okay! Okay!" The man said with obvious panic as the blade got closer. "I'm sorry! I'm really sorry!" Karina looked at the man timidly, as if he might yet break out of Elizabeth's grasp and leap at her. Still, the psion's shaking calmed, if very slightly. It was better than nothing at the very least and it had cost Elizabeth but only a little bit of effort, a net gain for the rogue.

The previously vocal man listened very carefully to her proposition, presumably because if he didn't she might give him a new hole in his throat to listen through. The refugees were a little less rapt in their attention, perhaps believing that they only needed to run faster than the person next to them to get out of the situation. Her hostage did not relax as she whispered in his ear, his opinion on whether she might be telling the truth about sparing him very much based on the proximity of the blade to his neck. To that end, his reply was almost instantaneous. "Yes! I'll serve, milady! Anything you want!"

She was given little time to take amusement in his sudden groveling tone as some of the refugees echoed his words. The 'boons' on offer and not needing to explain what had happened to Erhard's guards apparently beating out potential murder at the hands of a skilled assassin in six out of the seven remaining men. Being a skilled reader of people, the noblewoman could be certain that some weren't anything approaching loyal, but what she did with that information was up to her.

The seventh, however, foolishly and loudly declined. "To hell with that! You're just women! What can you do!? There's eight of us!" It did seem to spark some thought and dissent in the brains of the other refugees, barring the hostage who was outright horrified at such defiance while a weapon was still at his neck, but if Elizabeth handled the matter quickly and efficiently, maybe even violently, she might stop them from reconsidering resuming their efforts to beat the trio and the terrified spirit wielder.

 

[AshPrince]

Re: Family Matters (AshPrince) GMed by Hafnium

Elizabeth smirked, tilting her head to one side to lean her cheek onto the shoulder of the man she held at knife point. “You want to see what a woman can do?” She almost taunted. “Fine” She tossed the man to the ground and stepped forward into the space between the seventh and the rest. She waved her dagger out toward the crowd, hopefully inciting them to clear the space. “I’ll show you what a woman can do.” She drew a second dagger from their place on her legs and lunged for the chauvinist, intent on plunging the dagger in her right hand into his shoulder, while the one in her left came up to stab him in the gut.

She intended to make it a particularly brutal pair of blows the one in his shoulder intent on giving her a ‘handle’ to wield the man by, while the lower blow was to split the man open; should her knife sink in, she’d bury it to the hilt and then wrench it up until she hit either rib or collar bone, whichever was thick enough to stop her knife. The intended result was the man quiet literally spilling his guts for her.

Spoiler

End Grapple
Body Check to knock the Leader prone?
Draw Second Knife.
Attack Roll X2
Attempt to Gut The Fish.

 

[Hafnium]

Re: Family Matters (AshPrince) GMed by Hafnium

Spoiler

Elizabeth Silver: HP = 39/53, PP = 41, EP = 38, Status = Slightly bludgeoned, Grappled

NPCs
Alice: Fine.
Karina: Very much not fine.
Ruby: Fine.

Rolls

Spoiler

The refugee leader doesn't resist being freed of the grapple.

Attacks: Hits.
Damage: More than enough.

The man whose life she had quite literally held in her hands went stumbling aside as Elizabeth turned her focus on the bravest dissenter, seeming quite grateful that her attention and blades were no longer on him. The dead man picked up his club as she lunged toward him. It was up and ready just in time to accomplish nothing in his defense, as her first weapon was buried in his shoulder. He gave a surprised grunt of pain and winced as she made good use of her handle on him, but his eyes remained locked with hers as if he thought he might defend himself against her. This meant that, as her second blade opened his belly, she could see the wide range of his expressions.

His face was first a mask of determination, which quickly became pale, which then turned to one of horror and shock, which then became a daze. The sound of his club clattering to the floor was vaguely registered. It was once he had dropped his weapon that broke his eye contact with her, as he looked down at his situation and desperately began trying to pull his own intestines back into his body. Finally he simply fell over in shock, never again to unwisely question a woman with a knife and the skills to use it.

The rest of the refugees, not unexpectedly, quickly lost their appetite, both for conflict and in general. Alice seemed to be with them in that in the latter. Ruby wore a malicious little smirk. Karina, at seeing the violent evisceration of the man, went fleeing from the room with her hand covering her mouth--though, from the sounds of the retching, was still just around the corner. The assassin had efficiently put down the dissenters' second rebellion before it had even begun. Now, more than ever, she had everyone's rapt attention and, at the very least, coerced loyalty. It was probably time to wrap things up.

 

[AshPrince]

Re: Family Matters (AshPrince) GMed by Hafnium

Elizabeth had to smirk. That had gone better than expected. The insurrection had been effectively squashed, Karina was up and active again, Elizabeth had herself a nice set of thugs, and Alice learned just how brutal her ‘sister’ could be when crossed, and all with only one death. She wiped her blades clean on the thighs of her pant legs; there was something to be said about wearing a little blood. It gave you a certain ‘yes I actually have killed something’ credit; though thinking about it she wasn’t sure if the alien invaders bled red.

The Silver heiress gave a shrug, blood was blood. “Now then.” She smirked, turning back to the remaining refugees. Her blades were still drawn. “I believe you have something to be doing?” She cocked her head to one side; almost as if she were but a simple maid asking an honest question. The venomous smile across her face betrayed her otherwise. She expected the thugs to scatter like roaches, but whatever their reaction. She didn’t expect to need her knives again, and sheathed them back in place across her thighs.

“Ruby, be a dear and see about getting this cleaned up?” She tilted her head toward the succubus. She needed someone to clean up the dead guy, and somehow she didn’t expect the thugs would want to help; she supposed she could ask the guards but there would be questions she didn’t want to answer, and the refugees likely wouldn’t like hearing about how a noble woman gutted one of their number. Even if he was a would-be rapist. “Take a couple of the boys if you need help.” Still, cleaning up your dead friend’s entrails would be something hard to forget, and remembering who spilled them would keep the boys in line.

“Alice.” Elizabeth strolled over to her faux sister, deliberately blocking the gutted corpse from her view by placing it behind her as she retrieved the Sniffer’s Sword, and her proper fighting-knife from the former maid. “I think we should see if Karina is feeling better.”

 

[Hafnium]

Re: Family Matters (AshPrince) GMed by Hafnium

Spoiler

Elizabeth Silver: HP = 53, PP = 41, EP = 38, Status = Fine.

NPCs
Alice: Fine.
Karina: Very much not fine.
Ruby: Fine.

The group couldn't scatter quickly enough at her dismissal. Not quickly enough at all as Elizabeth gave the malicious succubus her task and offered up a few of them as helpers. "You two! Why don't you give me a hand?" The succubus called out at two stragglers who had waited a little too long to flee the room. They froze in place, knowing exactly who she was talking to and hoping that they were wrong. "Don't dally or we'll be busy until he starts to smell." Resignedly, the two men returned and began to help the demoness with the task of removing the corpse.

This left Elizabeth to pursue her own goals, namely: collecting her sister and gauging the extent to which Karina had been traumatized. "Okay!" The former handmaiden replied, apparently quickly getting over the sight of the dead man. The two then ventured out to find Karina just around the corner, trying desperately to keep her lunch down. The curvy psychic turned to look at the rogue, revealing her paled face, and then turned back toward the wall. "I can't believe you did that," she started in-between retches.

"Or anything you've done since this whole invasion started. You've stabbed me. You've set a building that might have been full of survivors on fire. You just gutted a man like a common animal!" The heaving stopped for a few moments. "I thought we were friends. I thought that I could trust you with anything. But who... What are you?" The psychic began to sob. "I just... I just want things to go back to the way they were before the invasion. Before everything was trying to..." she swallowed hard, "rape or kill me, or both. I want my parents." The beauty who many suitors might have desired before the invasion, both for her looks and the tie to her house, was a mess. But Elizabeth did always have a Silver tongue, she might be able to slow the woman's breakdown enough to get more use out of her, or try for something grander.

 

[AshPrince]

Re: Family Matters (AshPrince) GMed by Hafnium

Elizabeth took a deep breath, and laid a hand atop Karina’s shoulders. “I’ve done what I’ve had to.” It was a matter of fact statement. “Would you rather we mothered two more of those monstrosities, or more?” She set her hands on her hips and looked down to the nauseous noble. “Would you rather I had left that house, full of women for these; things to use and abuse as they like? Would you prefer a probably lifetime of abuse or a semi-quick death?” It was time to stop coddling Karina, Elizabeth couldn’t spend her time rescuing her if she wanted to have time for her own plans. “Would you rather I had left you there, left you with them?” She cocked her head to the side, looking down to her unwell ally, and paused for a moment; just letting it her own imagination concoct all the things that that horde could’ve, would’ve done to her if left to their own devices.

“The world is dark.” It was as matter of fact a statement as Elizabeth had ever said. “There’s no good to be done by doing good. Not here. Not now. It takes a cruel heart to do good these days, a cruel heart, a keen mind and a sharp blade.” All of which she happened to have at her disposal. “I can’t promise you your parents. But I can promise to kill ever wicked thing in this city until the streets are red rivers and the ravens grow too fat to fly. And when every last one of them is dead, we’ll rebuild. We’re Badarian Karina. We don’t cry, we make our enemies die.”

 

[Hafnium]

Re: Family Matters (AshPrince) GMed by Hafnium

Spoiler

Elizabeth Silver: HP = 53, PP = 41, EP = 38, Status = Fine.

NPCs
Alice: Fine.
Karina: Very much not fine.
Ruby: Fine.

The psychic looked at Elizabeth for a long moment. The rogue, long trained to read people's faces, could easily tell that Karina wanted to trust her--desperately so, in fact. She seemed ready to heel obediently, as her parents had no doubt long trained her to do to anyone who seemed to hold authority, as most Badarian women, noble or not, were trained to do. Before she could open her mouth to apologize and fall in line again, something snapped in her. "You could have warned me."

"I'm not a child, I knew the truth when I began to... show, after what they did to me. You could have told me what you intended and I would have understood." The woman's tone held more bitterness than Elizabeth had ever heard in it before. "But instead you stabbed me. I was scared and you stabbed me. I used to trust you with everything and you stabbed me..." She paused for mere seconds before breaking it with words that might prove to be increasingly dangerous. "How can you be so cold? It's like you're not even human."

"Don't insult Lady Elizabeth like that! She's the reason we're all still alive!" The normally silent handmaiden-slash-adopted-sister came to the defense of her mistress with none of the guile of the Silver woman. "She's simply done what she had to do! If she hadn't handled things the way she had, we would be dead or worse!"
"Really?" The spirit wielder snapped in return. She was becoming increasingly spiteful. "I'm beginning to think that if we hadn't been useful enough we'd have all been abandoned just like all the others."
"There might have been some left behind, but it was because there was no way for us to save them. It would have meant Lady Elizabeth leading us all to our own deaths and she didn't want to do that!"
There was a pregnant pause before Karina made her final reply. "She hasn't stabbed you yet. Let me know how you feel when she does."

The curvy spirit wielder spun on her heel and began to stomp away before Alice could frame a response. If she wasn't stopped, it seemed Karina would take her leave of the group--though it was difficult to say whether it would be permanent or temporary.