testrun_box | Possibly for queenofheartsrp

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Possibly for queenofheartsrp

1 - Action

The newest woman in the Gardens isn't outraged or panicking; she's seething as she physically hoists a rabbit away from her corset, her pink gown, and her crown. She flips her white shift over her head without any hesitation and begins dressing herself.

"If my latest kidnapper addresses me as 'the Princess of Aerisland,' then I swear by Hurane and the god of exhausted patience as my witnesses that I shall simply strike him and affect my own rescue," she says as she attempts to tighten her own corset. "At least that way I shall gain some welcome respect from the Fellowship."

2 - Action

The Mother of Monsters latest foray into the Gardens proper has been repulsed, at great cost to the inhabitants of the Garden - yourself included. The vicious claws of the harpies of Arimoi are not diseased or envenomed, thank whatever Gods you favor, but they still cut deep.

The Duchess Elstwhere winces at the results of her cursory examination, then sighs and begins to flex her hands and whisper some appeal to Huraine. Her hands begin to glow with warmth and light and life. "If you will let me tend to your injuries with this Cure Serious Wounds? I will have to touch the wound. It may sting."

3 - one could call her a woman of Action

At some part of the Gardens, there is a bath and there is wine, and her Grace is indulging in both along with you. She drains her cup, and laughs, and rolls her shoulders, simply allowing herself to soak and relieve tension.

"Milady, if you would indulge me, I would like to hear something of your home and your deeds," she says, leaning forward with a subtle kind of smile. "I confess myself curious about you."

Perhaps she is flirting. Perhaps she is not.

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"...your god has no imagination, does she? 'Cure serious wounds'? What the heck is a 'serious wound' anyways? Does it not work on other wounds?" Mir held in her guts through the crack in her armor, but the fact that she could crack jokes in such extreme pain said a lot about her. "I have healing magic of my own anyways."

The Duchess folds her arms and meets Mir's gaze, tempted to slap her with a cry of BE HEALED! This is not the first time in her life that someone she was trying to heal argued with her about it, but on the grounds of the spell's name?

"Perhaps you can forgive the savants of my world for standardizing the names of spells. When a Warrior is trying to prevent his stomach's immanent escape, they are in no state of mind to request Pelor's Radiant Touch or Hurane's Blissful Caress or Kord's Renewing Strength or whatever that member of the pantheon calls the gift of healing; much better to ask for a Cure Serious Wounds."

She offers her, still radiant, hand. "And for your information, a serious wound is a critical hit with a longsword. Now, are you seriously going to refuse my care for your 'serious' wounds because you think the spell's standardized name dull?"

Edited 2012-07-22 02:01 (UTC)

"It's much duller and unexciting. It's magic without magic, you know what I mean? Have some pride in your work..."

At the offer of the hand Mir waved with her free hand. "Oh no, torturous disemboweling actually reminds me of my childhood. Other girls had dolls, I had crippling pain and a gaping hole in my body. Except it was in my head, not my stomach..." The blood loss was making her even more silly than normal apparently.

Edited 2012-07-22 02:05 (UTC)

"Oh for Hurane's sake." Her Grace closes the distance between them, or tries, so she can literally lay hands on the gashes on Mir's belly. She was so not looking forward to a hand of misery poker with the Reyvatiel; being Greyghast's neice wasn't exactly a walk in the park, either.

Mir gasped and writhed under the spell, but it sealed her body back up enough for her to draw breath and breathed out. "Oh Soma and Ar Ru that stings!" Mir shook it off quickly though and summoned a little fairy with a big needle. "Ok, give me the good drugs. The happy ones, ok?" Nodding it's assent, the little creature plunged the needle into Mir and dispensed a dose of magical medicine that made Mir sigh and relax slightly.

The Duchess blinks repeatedly at the sight of a summoned faerie with the Good Shit.

"...I can see why you might find our healing spells unimaginative," is her eventual response. "You are a Cleric of some description, then?"

"Cleric no, but at least a little religious. The word is Reyvateil- close to human, but not quite, and made in a lab instead of born." Mir poked at her own belly experimentally. "Mostly, I just use magic, and lots of it."

Her grace nods at the explanation. "Faithful but not annointed," she says. "In my world, among our people, most healers are the beloved of their gods and goddesses. Huraine is not my only god, but She appears to have taken an interest in me."

That's because you managed to seduce the entire Awesome Fellowship without even trying, your Grace. Hurane approves of anything and anyone leading to romantic shenanigans.

"Would that make you and your kind living constructs, then? Are you created for magical talent, or for some other purpose?"

Mir looks up, focused on a point slightly off to the side. "I suppose so. What is Huraine the goddess of? The two I named were my world's spirit of death and the soul of a distant star who has arrived to minister to our world's wounds. They both have personalities I like."

Mir nodded. "We are in a way, though our children are not, even those that inherit our power. And while we are often made to work magic, and create wonders or wreck terrible destruction, there have been times when Reyvateils were considered little better than sex toys."

"Huraine is a goddess of love and..." And lust? And chocolate dipped strawberries? "...of hedonism," she says. "Mysthera only knows why She chose me for Her favor."

The duchess's response to the tail end of Mir's sentence is immediate: her jaw drops in horror and and her brows lower in anger. "That is - I should very much like Louni and the Fellowship to meet those responsible for that attitude. I can imagine it now. You could accompany us. It would be violent."

"You musta...had a lotta fun. Huh?" Mir wiggled her eyebrows, the drugs taking effect. "Ya can tell me, I write dat shtuff. All kinds of dat shtuff." Porn, or romance novels? You decide.

Mir looked up and smiled slightly. "You wanna join the revolution? I'm the leader! Or I wuz..." Mir blinked and looked around. "Shtupid Shurellia. Shudden't have locked me up for so long. It was just a little genocide and brainworshing..." Ok, it seemed that there had already been violence.

The Duchess does not facepalm. Duchesses do not, as a rule, facepalm. The duchess, instead, places the tips of her fingers on her forehead and sighs. For a full two seconds.

"My Lady Huraine, please protect the ally of your supplicants from the rites they perform in thy favor, amen," she says, and her hands begin to glow again.

She moves forward to thump Mir's shoulders with her cupped hands and let the magical power flow into her. "Neutralize Poison."

Mir's eyes shot open and she whimpered briefly as the pain flowed back in. Ow, ow, ow...ok, it wasn't that bad now. Just a dull ache more than anything else. She turned slightly to focus on the Duchess and then moved to stand up. "We aren't going to talk about that."

Dusting herself off, Mir looked to the sky, scanning for any more monsters. "Anyways. Your assistance in overthrowing long dead scientists who made girls solely for the purpose of bearing children is appreciated, but not needed strictly. Since they are, you know, dead."

"Talk about what?" Her grace flutters her eyelashes and smiles.

"I am happy to hear that those men are no longer able to harm others, yes," the Duchess says, cupping her hands loosely at her stomach. "Forgive me. It is an issue of relevance to me and my own life."

Mir glanced downward and nodded. "I understand. My...boyfriend and I have discussed children, but I've never had any of my own. I'm not even sure if I want more girls like myself or to bear humans..." Mir shook her head. "Not like it matters here though. I suppose that the Queen would love having the technology to create Reyvateils. We're designed to remain beautiful until the day we die, after all. And if she can control their sexualities...what more perfect creatures to form an all-female society?"

"That is -" The Duchess gasps. "No one should have that level of control over something so important, so central to one's sense of self, I so swear with Ocules as my witness."

She holds herself, as if cold. "Is that what my kidnapper wishes to do? Form a society bereft of men? I forsee an immediate complication with that."

"Well...historically, it hasn't worked out that way, no. But it's possible in theory, since we are artifical. There are just so many variables to control."

"Well, it makes sense, doesn't it? I mean, have you seen a male anything since we got here?" Mir paused to vault a fallen tree and extend a hand to held the Duchess over. "Anyways, biologically speaking, men aren't really necessary if you have the appropriate rites or science. Though, they are still very nice to have."

"I am certain that such is possible." Her Grace shudders. She's seen something similar, in her time as Greyghast's captive in all but name. "I speak not of the possibility of it, but of the morality of it, and the long term damage it would cause."

At the mention of the biology of children without men, the Duchess puts her hand to her finger, and her eyes widen as she contemplates it. "Goodness! By Ioun, Mother of Cities, I'd like to know how such a thing is possible, practically speaking."

In the back of her mind is a fantasy of a child with blond hair, and Cathayan facial features; and of a smiling 'father' in Louni.

Edited 2012-07-26 03:28 (UTC)

"Would it shock you to know that I once thought that a society where everyone's role was decided before they were even born was ideal?" Mir turned and smirked. "My younger days were those of the violent revolutionary, firebombs and pamphlets in the streets. Until I was arrested and throw into the gaol, of course."

"Typically, the science is more difficult than the rites, but more dependable. After all, fertility goddesses frequently have better things to do than bend the laws of nature to suit their worshipers, and the fertility gods are unwilling to let women get around men as a general rule." Mir thought about how to explain it and then pressed ahead into the ground of shaky metaphor. "The instructions of life are rather like the pages of a book you see..."

"Did you know that the gender of the child is set when it is only a few weeks into it's growth within the womb? One change is all that is necessary to differentiate male from female, and as a consequence, there are pages in a woman's book of life that are stuck together, unread by her body. Those pages hold the instructions to build male organs, masculine chemicals, and even the male component of a child. All of that goes unused, just as a man never uses his body to grow a womb, or the finger never grows an eye at it's tip. But all this, this monstrous potential is still there. It is a power best respected and used carefully. And a power that could, with just a bit of blood and great care and knowledge of where to cut the book, splicing here, rebinding there, allow two women to have a child."

She ponders this, eyes closed, deep in thought. One hand on her chin, eyebrows raised, she contemplates this barrage of information - and the nature of the metaphor.

"To call it a book implies 'ink' and a 'quill,'" she says. "I am not certain that was your intent, but if it was, what manner of quill and what manner of ink would one need to rewrite a particular Manual of Bountiful Growth? This is not a mere academic question for me."

"It would depend, of course, on what manner of changes you mean to make. It is quite natural for there to be a few copying errors from time to time. Frequently, these do no harm. Less frequently, they snarl a critical process, and many degenerative illnesses are caused by a shared 'mistake' carried by both parents and passed unknowingly to the child. Rarest of all is the change that quit accidentally offers some advantage. So too, end many early efforts to improve things by editing by alchemy or magic."

Mir scuffed the dirt absently with a shoe, smoothing an area to create something she could draw in. "I was created by the greatest alchemists and minds of my creator's era. None finer existed in their craft, I say this without pride, but to warn you. All three of my sisters were stillborn or sick in their minds. You ask a question burdened with great risk. There is ink in abundance-but I am not even sure that I can teach you to understand what you must understand to know how to pick up the quill."

"The thin blood of some nobles, and the hereditary madness of Thermidor," the Duchess muses out loud. "You say these are errors in the metaphorical text, compounded over time?"

At 'understanding what you must understand,' the Duchess nods, and sighs. "Falwythwr said something similar about wizardry, that I did not understand what I did not understand."

"Yes." Mir nodded and held up her hands. "Most people have two copies of each trait-and a good one may conceal a defect." Curling her finger she showe a 'damaged' copy and then hid it behind her other hand. "One person who bears such a trait in a noble family, through their descendants, may poison bloodlines for centuries to come. The problems you speak of are ones that do not kill in the womb, or subtly increase the chance of cancer devouring from within at extreme old age. But both of those are probably more common types of errors."

Mir frowned slightly and then reached out to touch the duchess' shoulder. "There is much to understand. Should I begin at the beginning?"

"I have heard many say that is the best place to begin." She hides her smile well, but not well enough. "I am willing to listen."

"Do your people have the concept of the 'atom', that is, the fundamental unit that cannot be reduced further? If you take a knife and divide a wheel of cheese, and then again cut into it, even if your knife is infinitely sharp, you will eventually encounter an element that cannot be cut without becoming not-cheese." Mir cocked an eyebrow and then drew a pair of circles in the dirt, one inside the other. "As with cheese, so it is with life, for there is a fundamental and observable element of all natural creatures. Those who discovered it were looking at thinly sliced pieces of plants and saw regular and ordered blocks which reminded them of the cells of monks." A few squiggles, implying a tightly folded sheet of something, filled a great deal of space between the two circles.

"So obviously, these fundamental units of life are called cells. As we are not plants, ours are not so regular, or so square. And they are of many kinds and shapes-some of them have fibers much thinner than a hair running the full length of the spine. Others move themselves through the blood, seeking infection by squeezing through the smallest crack. A muscle fiber is a bundle of cells, long and dense with energy producing parts. And all that lives, begins as a single cell."

Edited 2012-08-21 11:25 (UTC)

Don't let the giggling and the nickname "Strawberry Shortbus" fool you; if the Duchess has a dump stat, it's not Intelligence nor Wisdom. She thinks on this, eyes closed and musing out loud.

"So there is a smallest thing that can said to live... I wonder what healing magic does to close wounds. If we're speaking of a monk's cell, would it patch the holes in the walls, I wonder? Build more rooms where they were torn away?"

She opens her eyes and looks at you. "And what is a monk's cell without a prayer book. This is where the 'book of life' you speak of is kept? You will forgive me if I stretch these analogies."

"Probably building more rooms or filling the space between them if it is an exceptionally clean cut. Which brings us to another point-life grows by increasing the number or the size of the individual units." Mir kept an eye on her curious student, ready for the next question.

In response to the question, Mir reached down with her fingers and drew short lines inside the inner circle. "That's it. It's sealed away within it's own little cell within the cell. That keeps it safe from anything that might damage it, and if the rest of the cell needs instructions they can be copied out." A few dots were poked on the surface of the squiggly thing that took up most of the space inside the dirt drawing. "Truth be told, it can be more like a city than a monk's personal quarters. There are workshops and engines, warehouses and ports. We live in the middle-sized world, unaware of the world of the tiny things within us, and the vastness between the stars." Mir felt almost poetic, considering the connection between stars and cells.

"Cities with guards, and bandits. Falwythwr spoke of that when she drew ill. She said some of my magics sounded the alarm and armed the Guard."

"So, within that vast small world, cells contain that writing, those instructions. Is that how they know to be hair or nails or skin?"

Edited 2012-08-24 02:36 (UTC)

"An apt comparison. And some of these cities are actually the guards of our bodies, defending against infection and parasites-though not always effectively."

"Ahh." Mir sat back and looked up, drumming fingers on her thigh. "That would be the case, would you not expect it to be? Shockingly enough, all the instructions are the same from hair to womb to bone. It is only which ones that are carried out which vary. There is, if I recall my lessons correctly, a sort of cascade of effects, starting when one is little more than the size of the head of a pin. Top and bottom, left and right, these things are decided very early on. And on the left and right, there must be arms and legs, so there are instructions made for such things. Each limb must have it's digits, each digit requires a nail, and so on."

Mir lowered her gaze and gave a cheeky grin. "A careful charting of the growth of the fetus will reveal that masculinity is the derived condition. Of course, here in the gardens, it would seem to be a condition that has been excised completely from the population."

[ America winces in pain, clutching her side. It hurts, of course, but she's a nation, it will heal soon enough. So she smiles, a bit forced. ]

Nah. I still don't really believe in that hocus pocus. A heroine can take care of herself, y'know?

The Duchess puts a hand over her mouth, to stop herself from laughing. Certainly this self-styled heroine was brave, but the attempt to seem casual about it was transparent.

"My experience with heroes and heroines has taught me that, while that might be true, they work best as a team. Please, allow me."

America pouts at that, a stubborn look gracing her face. It wasn't so much that she didn't want to be healed, rather it would hurt her pride to let someone heal her like this. Especially with magic--if that happened, she'd have to admit England was right about magic.

"N-no! It'll close up soon, really." She shifts in an attempt to get comfortable. When she speaks next, she falls into a casual southern drawl; the one she gets when she's trying to charm someone. "This ain't nothin' to worry about, little missy. I'm a nation." She may have not mentioned that before; she wasn't used to it being a big deal.

"If you should change your mind, I shall be happy to render assistance in any case," her Grace assured the woman.

When America tried to get comfortable, the Duchess tucked her skirt under her and sat down beside her. "A nation? Truly? Ah, but I suppose you mean that in the same sense as the phrase l'etat cest moi." The Duchess giggles. "By that logic, I am Elstwhere."

Harpies. It had to be harpies. Those cackling, feathered, feather-brained fiends, with their sharp claws and their abject lunacy; Alice's hands are still clenched in white-knuckled fists and stained with harpy blood and feathers. The shell shock hasn't quite worn off yet when the Duchess speaks up, startling her at first.

"O-Oh! Oh, Your Grace, you don't need to ask my permission! You can touch me any way you ple-ah! Ow!"

Oof. Alice winces and stops squirming. Squirming is not something one should do with harpy scratches across one's back.

"I would ask you not to tempt me, but such pleas would fall on deaf ears." The Duchess allows herself a faint smile at that.

She massages the wounds shut with a prayer: "Thy love heals all wounds, thy caress comforts all hurts. Huraine be praised." S

he keeps her hand on where the stomach wound was. "That was exemplary, Alice. I am so very, very glad to have such a capable maid here with me."

Alice wears a blissful smile the entirety of the time the Duchess has her hands on her. How much of it is the healing, Huraine, or the Duchess isn't really easy to tell. Probably all three. Either way, her face is a little red when Her Grace finishes.

"That really was exemplary, Your Grace-... Huh? Oh, you mean-! Right!"

She quickly composes herself, and tries to straighten up her maid uniform and simultaneously wipe the feathers off of her hands. Good thing Ecinacea can launder out nearly anything.

"You can count on me, Your Grace! If you ever have a problem that can be solved by hitting it very, very hard, look no further than your Alice! Just... maybe next time we can pick a fight with something less sinister. Like an Ogre, or a Dragon."

"Such problems are uncommon, but more common than I'd like here. I am certain you will have need to protect me again."

Elstwhere gives her a squeeze, then moves her hand up to Alice's cheek. "Thank you. I know that must have been difficult for you."

"Anything that wants a part of you will have to go through me first, Your Grace!"

Alice hugs her back, but quickly corrects herself. She is still a maid, after all. Still, she isn't exactly complaining about the hand on her cheek.

"Those... things... are terrible, Your Grace, but the thought of them laying a single feather on you is worse than anything they could do to me!"

Her Grace puts a hand over her giggling mouth. "Let us hope that such will not be necessary in the future. There are others here that are still fighting, though. Shall we join them?"

Her Grace has joined the party! What's more, her Grace is now brandishing a Mace + 2, a dire tenebrious silk dress, and a rather cruel smile.

"You've really taken to this work, Your Grace!" Alice smiles back, far less cruelly, because a battle-ready Duchess is the sort of thing that makes her weak at the knees (but not so weak that she couldn't kick some a person through a stone wall). "Though, just so you know, I was kidding when I said we should find an ogre or a dragon to fight. I really don't think they'd be level-appropriate right now..."

"Quite correct. Fortunately, the threats seem to be so far keyed to our level. But there are a good number of people who, for lack of a better way of putting it, have no class."

She sighs, and steps back to allow the girl with ~~6d12+(6(Con Bonus)) hit dice~~ greater toughness to take point. "I rather think the Awesome Fellowship would wish to protect them, if only to loot the monsters as reward."

"That's convenient. For us, at least... But you're right. Let's go!" Alice doesn't stop to question their objective any further, or her sudden position at the front of the party. She's got her mission, and short of crawling dungeons lined with traps or puzzles with less than obvious answers, she's pretty confident she can get the job done.

"Should we save some loot for them since they aren't here? Or maybe we should save some souvenirs to bring back for the others instead. I bet Wilhelm would really appreciate a gift!"

The Duchess laughs. "We are not obligated; the bylaws of the Fellowship make that quite clear. Still, if we find a wand or staff we cannot use or a Spleen Seeker, we know who to gift them to, yes? And there's no reason we cannot buy them a nice meal with our earnings."

"That said, I do think Wilhiem would look rather dashing with a belt of ogre skin leather..."

Edited 2012-08-24 19:52 (UTC)

"Mmm, yes, quite!" Alice giggles back, feeling better about the situation already. Banter is always a healthy part of any good adventuring relationship, after all.

A noise makes Alice stop, though, either out of instinct or, well, just common sense. She looks back to the Duchess for guidance, because it could have been anything. Other people, monsters, the broken stick under her foot.

... Oh. Wait.

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Possibly for queenofheartsrp

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WOW THAT WAS SURE A TYPO

Re: WOW THAT WAS SURE A TYPO

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2

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2 naturally, I couldn't miss this opportunity

2, it's always 2

I would have done 3 but we were aiming for non-porny (this time)

Re: I would have done 3 but we were aiming for non-porny (this time)

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