"Timid, hm?"  Kassian withdrew his hands and rested his chin on his fist.  Sometimes--often, even--Vahni said things that made little sense to him.  "Well, good thing I have you to protect me."

Slowly, so as not to startle, Razi lay down.  Speaking involved bearing his rather intimidating fangs, now covered in roc blood.  Maybe making himself even smaller would help.

His voice came out whispy, raspy, and deep.  With inhuman lips, his words did not enunciate completely.  "I am uninjured.  How is your sheep?"

"You know, I thought it to be brigands at first."  Deye's voice jumped with every jolt.  It couldn't have been comfortable for the centaur either, having Deye's backside thumping upon his spine.

"But last I saw, they didn't look, ah...human.  Or anything like human.  You might avoid the road?"

Even knowing that Deye had run for hours, then walked, then crawled, even knowing that he hadn't stopped once until he collapsed, he still spooked himself enough to glance behind them.

Nothing there.

Gospel stood rod-straight in her arms.  After all that business with kissing he didn't want to give her any indication of interest.  He didn't trust even the hug.

"Yes, Arca thrives."  He broke the hug while touching her as little as possible.  "Who ruled here when you last walked the city?"

Raven opened his mouth, but snapped it shut again.  He, uh...didn't have an answer to that.

"Ummm..."  He stared upward and scratched his head with his free hand.  "I suppose...that's better, then?  But that's not what you said before!  Is it or isn't it?!"

"It can, and that is my goal, yes.  Whether I am capable of it, we'll have to see."  As he'd said, he was not the best at this.  His strength lay in the control of the elements and even in that he worked more naturally with large forces rather than small ones.  The reading and tracing of malefic residues required considerable more subtlety than he usually worked with.  Even in healing, he tended to overwhelm infection and virulence with sheer force more often than not.

Haven moved his hand up Hazel's arm to squeeze his shoulder.  "Will you be all right?  Someone killed her right there where you live."

Height:
5'1"

Gender:
female

Species:
human

Ethnicity:
Half Serenian, half Connlaothan




Appearance:
At 5'1" she's shorter than most (thanks to her Connlaothan father).  She's got almost no curves to her and is often mistaken for male.  Her hair is about chin length and is a dusky blonde.  Her eyes are grey.  Wears a lot of blue (it's her favorite color).

Personality:
Naidaca is exuberant, driven, and persistent.  Her passion is cartography and exploring, and she is obsessed with discovering new places and being the first to map the entirety of the southern part of Le'raana.

Abilities:
Cartography, wilderness survival, traveling.

@visualspice
Yes!  Event badges!  We started doing these on RotE with the Libra event and I loved it!

Thoughts on making gradated guild badges, kind of like the Storyteller/Storymaster badges?
That is, you could get a badge for creating a guild, plus another even more bling-y badge for keeping it active for a long time?

That was the pity of it.  When one wanted only a single thing, all other pleasures paled to nothing beside its absence.  What did he want, if he could not leave here?  Nothing.  He wanted nothing.

"Your excruciating and slow demise would go a ways to soothe my soul, but that seems unlikely to happen," Hawk said, musing.

He could ask to see his brothers.  Mahvash would almost certainly agree, but Hawk was not yet ready to call on them yet.  Of the three, Raven and Crow would be of use to him, but his pride would not let Crow see him like this until he was truly desperate and Raven...well, Raven was something of a tornado.  Brutal, unexpected, and impossible to predict.  Raven might free him.  He also might wreck half of Essyrn.

Hawk sighed.  "I wouldn't mind access to the yards."

The slave yards, as it were.  Where the gladiators who were not privately owned by merchant princes took their practice.  They had an enormous training yard, but any gladiator whose was willing to pay the nominal fee could make use of it.

He would like the company of other warriors.  Not the paid sparring partners that Mahvash hired to keep him in form.  Real warriors.  He would like to get out of this palace once in a while.

And, most of all, he would like the chaos that comes of moving about from place to place and being in large crowds—in that chaos his escape might be sown.

There.  My entire character quicklist is up.

SO YOU CAN STOP COMPLAINING NOW @Rhi-Rhi

He ought to put a stop to this.  Really.  Fairly every scrap of experience he'd managed to acquire in this world screamed at him this was too good to be real.  How often did a man like him happen upon some pretty young slut in the middle of the woods who just couldn't wait to get on his knees and get a cock in his mouth?

Never.  That never happened.

He knew all this.  He also knew that with his cock in the boy's able hands, there was just no hope for him now.  Jackal put up with the teasing for few aggravating minutes then growled in frustration.

"Since you're talking all day about it."  He grabbed the boy's jaw with one hand, prying it open, and guided his cock into his mouth with the other, thrusting toward the back of the boy's throat.

Mother Sun, grant me the patience not to dash her head in with a rock.

"I do know," he said, steering them to the right when they came to a crossroads near the center of the village.  "You mean diversions.  Ways to take your mind off your responsibilities."

Blessed Light, the armory.  Maybe she would turn her attention elsewhere for five bloody seconds.

"I find I have little time for such things."  He motioned her into the large, open air collection of stalls with their displayed weapons.

"Wouldn't want to strain your delicate eyes," Cade said, rather enjoying the bit of challenge, the bit of rivalry Syrae brought to this whole thing.  He arched up against Syrae, rocking his hips into the other man's.  A little more of this kind of talk and Cade would be hard soon.  "But that would involve getting up, and I don't think you really want to go anywhere just now, do you?"

It was dreadfully difficult to sit still while she waiting for Nakato to find a window of approach.  To stop herself from fidgeting, Soralyn studied the camp.  So many warriors!  It made sense, as there were many slaves to watch over, yet she wondered at how they kept such a large undertaking beneath the notice of the province guards.  They were not that far from the capital!

She heard rather than saw Nakato shuffled up behind her, and soon her hands came loose.  She kept them where they were, lest she rouse attention.

"Well done!"  Soralyn shifted to the side so she could get at the hands of a nearby captive without alerting anyone.  "Quickly, begin work on the others!"

"More color?"  Cade examined his own arm, darker on top and a bit paler on bottom, but with more color than he'd ever seen on himself.  "I'm darker than I've ever been!"

He grinned, brazen and fairly confident where Syrae's head was at.  "'Course you haven't seen all the parts of me haven't been in the sun for comparison."

"House or barn, I will be glad to reach it.  I'm so sick of sleeping outside!"

Was that an odd sentiment for a wolf?  Hmm.

"Of course,"  Cade said, "that means heading back into the desert."

That drew one long, heavy sigh out of him.  "I was rather hoping I'd be done with that forsaken place."

As he said it, he passed Syrae a look.  The kind that said he did not at all mind the casual touch, nor would he mind others like it.  Then he turned onto his side so he could face him.  "I'm not well suited for Essyrn I think."

"You're a vicious little rat," Kassian said, returning Vahni's grin.  This was the first real bite he'd seen from the kid!

Not entirely fixed up yet, but I got a bunch of free characters listed!

Haven had to smile at that.  "Oh, I'm plenty afraid of it.  I just don't let it intimidate me away from doing what I know I must."