February open log

[emet_sulk]

🧙 WHO: Emet-Selch and anyone
⚔️️ WHAT: Coming out of a sleep (canon update) and throwing himself into quests to distract himself from new memories
🕒 WHEN: Throughout February
🗺️ WHERE: See prompts
⚠️ WARNINGS:
- Possible sexual content in the arrow threads.
- Potential spoilers for Endwalker, let me know if you are fine with them or not.


1. G(lacial)-Warriors 🗡️ (Knight quest)

A quest is just what he needs to take his mind off the plethora of revelations to come from his day of forced slumber - and what better way than to go out and hit something until it falls to pieces? He takes his gunblade, his horse, and the provisions provided by Camelot to all knights embarking on this particular journey. In typical fashion, he does not bother to ask around and see if anyone would like to join him. No, he wants the time to himself to sort out his thoughts.

Yet nothing is ever that easy, is it? He's ambushed by one of the I.C.E. constructs as he nears the spot. His horse rears up in alarm, throwing him from the saddle before bolting into the trees. Emet-Selch lands with a painful thud into a bank of snow. Fortunately, the gunblade strapped to his back seems in order. Unfortunately, the ICE is advancing on him and he's having trouble getting out of the snow.

Help?

(ooc: Existing CR are free to assume they accompanied him from the start if they want.)

2. Serve, Save, Slave, Slay...Some Sushi 🗡️

The sushi monster is no easier to slay than the I.C.E. as Emet-Selch discovers much to his chagrin. What does a man have to do to get some relatively simple knight quests??

The...creature(?) fires a round of pellets at him which has him diving into a rolls to avoid. He comes up into a crouch just in time to parry one of the sharp green swords it wields, quickly getting his feet beneath him before the second can slice him in half. He's been at it for a few minutes by now, focus utterly consumed by the opponent before him. He's growing tired though and the thing still doesn't look like it plans to give up.

"Ridiculous thing," he seethes. "And me, reduced to using these inferior magicks... I should have asked Irhya for a greatsword instead of a gunblade."

He fires off a round and its ricochet echoes throughout the forest. Even if the sound doesn't draw attention, the eerie blue after-image of the shot is worth attention.

(ooc: Existing CR are free to assume they accompanied him from the start if they want.)

3. I See You, Opening! 🛡️

Well of course, Emet-Selch doesn't want anything to do with these tricksy arrows and their dubious effects. But other people may have no such qualms. Perhaps you want to see this sour-looking man pour his heart out to one of his associates. Or perhaps you want to make him suffer by tasting nothing but chocolate for two weeks. Anything goes. Really. Anything.

If shooting: Please nominate which arrow you're shooting him with. I'm happy to write custom starters if you want.

If encountering him after he's been shot: Please nominate which effect you want for him. Again, I can write a custom starter if that's preferred.

4. Wildcard

If you have some ideas, feel free to send me a PM or leave a comment on the CR meme.

Comments

[heartofthestar]

"I cannot remember saying you did, and yet you have it anyway," she replied, utterly refusing to be nettled or even stop smiling. At that, she interposed herself between the beast and the man, a ward of light forming as a shield while her chakrams morphed into a crimson blade. Some of Azem's arts adapted most readily to these new magics, though others remained beyond her utterly. Best not to let him get hurt when she could perform no healing!

[emet_sulk]

Her altruism irked him. Twelve thousand years and she waltzed up as though nothing had happened--? But no, perhaps she had no knowledge of what was to come, like Hythlodaeus had not. There was no sign of the divinity she would take unto herself - not that he cared what she was like at this point. He had spent a long time resenting her.

"Don't think for one moment that I am going to thank you for it," he growled as he fired shots over her head at the monster.

[heartofthestar]

She might not know how it ended, but she knew she had done what she set out to do. What else mattered? How can she hold anger at anyone, knowing all that she did?

"Gratitude is a poor reason to offer aid," she said, as sunny as the gods that Azem's legend had wrought, "and aid contingent on gratitude like as not shall receive none."

She was in the way of the irritating gnat the creature wished to swat, and it swung at her with every intent of knocking her aside. But she took the blow on her shield and let it slide off, making herself an implacable wall. Truth be told, no matter the circumstance, fighting alongside someone made her heart sing. After all those years alone, only to end it by fighting alone against eight who stood against her? This was life, this was living.

[emet_sulk]

He grits his teeth but decides not to reply for now. Distraction on the battlefield can mean one's downfall, as he had learnt over and over through the course of the centuries. Having her protect him is irksome enough without all the rest of the baggage. But very well: if that is the position she will assume then he will focus on damaging the monster.

The next cartridge he loads, he fires as a wide shot, scattering the blue flames in the creature's face. While it's reeling, he charges past Venat's shield and slashes once, twice at its legs before leaping back.

"We take turns drawing its attention," he snaps at her. "One attacks whilst the other defends. Go!"

It is a simple matter to activate the etched rune in his weapon and create a thick wall of ice and snow to weather the monster's ire as it turns on him.

[heartofthestar]

With no objections to his plan, Venat reforged her blood weapon into twin chakrams again. Truth be told, switching was easier with this specific magic than it had been when she'd needed to adjust the very flow of aether within her -- she could almost welcome the ease, if not for how much said flow of aether had augmented her capabilities!

Well, no sense in complaining that she wasn't superior to all folk! Spinning lightly round to gain an angle on the creature, she hurled both chakrams forward in an upcurving spin that carved into it wickedly. "And pirouette!"

apologies for the wait, been a bad week for me

[emet_sulk]

The monster slams its tail against the wall, roaring in frustration. Just as it tries to lift its foot and crush it, Venat's chakrams carve through and it staggers. Its eyes turn towards her and it begins to advance, trailing fish roe like blood...

Emet-Selch takes his chance to dart forward wordlessly and slice at the monster's feet. If it's anything like a real creature then it should have a weak tendon in the ankle. But then again...this is no ordinary beast.

[heartofthestar]

Not in the least bit normal, but perhaps with coordination...

Venat wasted no time, letting her chakrams dissipate back into a swirl of blood as she twisted her hands around each other. A flare of light burst outward, the majority of it focused like a column to engulf the creature's head. Not an attack meant to cause harm, but perhaps to make it stagger -- and to put its weight on one foot just as the blade strikes it. Wound and posture combine to send it stumbling down.

[emet_sulk]

She anticipates his strike...just like-- No. He shakes the memory away roughly, not distant and faint like all the others but fresh in his mind thanks to that cursed dream.

He scoots back as the monster crashes down then leaps up its lumpy body to drive his fiery blade home. He's not entirely sure why it's effective considering it's made of dead fish, but it is. The beast is open for Venat to deliver her own final blow and hopefully clinch the battle.

[heartofthestar]

Memories of an older time were at once witheringly distant and painfully close. Distant because of the sheer gulf of time, without any excuse of memory tricks to blur them out and then restore them whole cloth. Close because she had held them so, hope against hope, for that same gulf of time. But for now, she radiated delight -- the sheer joy that shaped her time as Azem, joy for living and doing and seeing and experiencing. Joy she hadn't felt in millennia, and had thought to never feel again.

She spotted her opening without fail, then leaped into the air with a twist, hurling one-two the chakrams so they whirled like saws against the body. Then again, she borrowed an old trick: she held up a hand, and as she reached the peak of her jump, hurled a blade forged of light straight into the creature's mass.

[emet_sulk]

He flinches from the light, the motion and flash evoking a fear he still constantly suffers from. He reels away from his buried weapon, shielding his eyes, trying to still the panic which threatens to rise.

Everything he had ever loved had been taken from him with that single stroke. It takes him some time to gather his wits after the flash is past, and anger very quickly replaces his earlier panic. Anger at himself for continuing to cower at the light, anger at her as the one responsible for his fear.

"Don't you know anything else?" he snaps.

[heartofthestar]

Venat had not for a moment considered the potential reaction such a strike could inspire, for light had always been close to her, never an enemy nor a danger to her. "Much as I may enjoy learning new things, a battle with another person to aid is a poor time to do so," she pointed out mildly. "Nor can you argue its effectiveness."

[emet_sulk]

"Oh, 'tis most certainly effective."

Why is he provoking this, he finds himself wondering. Far easier it would be to let past grudges be. But as the after-images of her attack fade from his retinas and the palpitations of his heart settle, he realises that the hurt he has buried for centuries upon centuries will never fade.

The Warriors of Light here would be disappointed in him, probably. Sourly, he shoves the thought away. So what if they are? He has never been a person who easily forgives.

"...Nevermind. Thank you for your assistance, but I can take it from here." Rude and abrupt coming from a supposed stranger. Not that he cares. He pulls out his phone with his other hand to report the quest as completed.

[heartofthestar]

Did but she know such arguments were necessary, Venat might have several to make in opposition to his thoughts. Did she think it would help, she might even make them. But to the contrary, all she knew was a certain brusque response that, were truth to be told, offered no surprise at all. Diplomatic replies of hers notwithstanding, she suspected he'd needed her help, and had no desire to face that fact. Thus, that abrupt rudeness.

She had encountered such many, many times in the past. Far from minding it, such attitudes warmed her heart -- simply one more facet in the grand jewel that was the people she so loved. So her response, a smile that spoke only of love and delight, likely made little sense to anyone observing. Of course, an old acquaintance of hers might know its source from recalling her words, over time... but few if any ever understood no matter what she said.

"And I thank you in turn. I shan't mind if you mention me in your report, of course, but either way, be well and safe until you reach home once again."

[emet_sulk]

His sourness now directs itself more openly to her. He is not quite so petty as to leave her off the report but her smile irritates him into thinking it.

He turns away though rather than comment, instead muttering under his breath as he angrily types into the quest board application.

"I've no home since you took it away from me."

[heartofthestar]

The barb lodged, caught, tore. Venat's hand curled tight, terribly tight indeed.

"I have done many terrible things, many unforgivable things," she said, her eyes shut so the words stayed calm. "But that is not one of them."

[emet_sulk]

He hadn't meant for Venat to hear that. He glares at her, the silence dragging on for interminable seconds before he decides that no, he's not prepared to have this conversation with her yet. It's bad enough to know that she's here with all the rest of them, that eventually one of them is going to out him because it's impossible to avoid anyone here forever.

So he turns away again without another word and walks further off. A clear and curt dismissal.