Shorlixa/WPSessionFifteen
And here be Session Fifteen for this crew of pirates.
Session Fifteen
We now return to our circle of Solars and their undersea battle. Ryoujal has just finished off an infernal worm, but the four others are all ready to attack and proceed to do so. Back on the ship, Red and Orillian are working to prevent more creatures from attaching to their ship.
Megumi swims away from the sea monsters - her weapon depends upon distance, after all - and keeps close to the hull of the ship, to make it that much harder for them to surround her.
Ryoujal keeps close to the body of the worm he just slain, it's not much cover, but it's better than using the ship.
Lady Syn twirls her sword ready to use it to bat the worm away or push herself off the ship as needed.
The worms all fail miserably, their circular mouths biting on empty air rather than Exalted flesh.
Lady Syn just shakes her head at the sorry attack before giving the worm a quick cut.
The infernal worm writhes from its injury, but remains wriggling, for now.
As Red and Orillian fire away, they notice one of the larger creatures start swimming in, followed by a swarm of other creatures. While the number of live creatures appears to be thinning, this massive creature could possibly put a dent in their ship. They'll have to stop it quickly.
Megumi reaches out and draws forth more ethereal arrows. Drawing back, she fires both at once, one spiralling toward the nearest, the other toward the creature Syn was fighting.
Megumi's arrows ripple through the water and punch right through both worms and they spasm once and die, drifting limply in the water. From behind, another two worms are wriggling towards them.
Orillian takes aim again, firing to drive the creature off, but suspects he's going to have to end up using his hammer on it.
Big Red eyes light up as he gains a view on the big sea creature. He starts pouring the heart of his essence into the cannon. Fussing the shot with the sand from his anima banner, he lets lose a torrent of raw energy at the beast trying to drive it to the ocean floor.
Ryoujal looks to see the ones that are currently trying to get into the ship and launches himself towards the cloest one with a roar, shredding into it with his claws.
Ryoujal attempts to shred the worm, but ends up just leaving his claw marks on the beast and having to move off and defend when the worm turns around to face him.
The creature rolls around gracefully in the water, completely dodging Orillian's shot...and rolling right into Red's. The scream of pain reverberates through the water, almost deafening the Solars fighting outside, but from the readout on the map, the creature is still coming.
The worms take advantage of the pained screaming as cover to begin their next assault. Orillian watches for where the massive creature is most likely to strike the hull and hurries there.
On the outside, the Solars who have the time to take note with realise that there are groups of mini-robots crawling on the surface of their ship, busily repairing the damage the worms are doing, as well as adding their own unique touches.
Megumi seems to disappear in a flash of water and cooked pasta in the face of whatever oncoming worm she may face.
Lady Syn flips behind the corpse of the one she attacked using its blood as cover as she brings her blade to keep the maws away from her.
Ryoujal knows that the one he slashed will be coming for him, and tries to swim a bit away from the boat and readies his body for the assault.
The worms miss pathetically once more, only managing to suck in more mouthfuls of seawater and maybe a bit of taco shell.
Lady Syn flips over the worm and lets her blade run along its back.
The worm still stands, leaving the exterior Solars to deal with two unwounded worms and two wounded ones. While each Solar has been fighting one worm apiece, the fourth worm is busy chewing through the hull.
Big Red lets lose on the big guy one more time. Sending yet another sand infused blast to score the beasts hide.
The large beast is still oncoming, though moving just a tad slower than before. It's still moving fast enough to ram the ship hard. It'll probably only be a few more moments before the exterior Solars can spot it.
Orillian calls out to the automata, "Peel back the hull around the breaching worm, then close it behind!" It'll be less damaging in the long run than if it breaches on its own...
Megumi shoves off the side of the hull, spinning in the water to fire a pasta surprise at each of the wounded worms. Contrails of baking pasta flow behind, boiling from the etherial flames of the arrow mixed with the moisture of the surrounding water.
And Red sends off a last, extremely powerful essence blast, blowing said creature in half and preventing the creature from successfully ramming the ship. Its dying screams echo through the water and the exterior Solars just figure something big must have died and as they take a look, they see a large, wyld twisted sea-dragon drifting in the water. Well, what's left of it anyway. It means Orillian's efforts were wasted, but he'll just have to repair the hull when he can. Megumi finishes firing against the last two worms and effortlessly dispatch them. The swarm of demons surrounding the sea-dragon seem ready to converge on the ship and continue their assault, then at an unheard signal, they all turn and begin swimming away. The worms attached to the ship dematerialise with an infernal ripple as does most of the creatures swimming away. It seems that the battle is over, for now, leaving the sub surrounded by dead demons but a very alive circle of Solars and their crew.
Lady Syn heads back to the dry ship.
Megumi looks around momentarily before swimming back to the airlock.
Big Red pulls stuff to roll a smoke form his bag to celebrate his recent kill
Orillian awaits the others at the airlock. "Minor damage sustained, captain. Suggest we examine the wrecks for survivors and salvage."
Ryoujal swims back into the airlock since there's nothing else left to kill.
Megumi nods. "Good idea. Let's go for it."
The Solars easily re-enter the ship. With most of the creatures dead, they note a rather lack of sealife around them according to the map, though there's a few last grains to represent the fleeing beasts before it too vanishes. The remainder of the action is probably occurring on the surface. When the ship surfaces, they note that the storm is still ongoing. The wrecked remains of ships are everywhere while the ships still surviving attempt to do their best at rescue efforts now that the main threat has been dealt with. It's a hard battle.
Ryoujal says, "I guess it's time for me to get wet again. Where should I dump the survivors?"
Orillian goes about ordering the minidroids. "Help the command crew lift the survivors and salvage out of the water, and _don't_ add any special touches to the survivors."
Megumi shrugs. "Put the survivors on any reasonably good floating flotsam that we can't use."
Megumi says, "Or a launch, if we have a spare."
Orillian hops in for salvage, looking for useful artifacts.
Megumi helps collect the survivors, and as soon as that's done, tosses in some more help with the salvage; since she knows far too little about artifact salvaging (the most interesting part), she at least gathers what she can in the way of ship supplies.
Orillian slaps together a workable barge from the bits of wood and rigging he finds floating by, working the pieces almost like a juggler.
Syn starts swimming around the wrecks and floating bodies looking for useful things to claim for their ship. She finds some supplies to supplement the ones they already have. But that's about it. Ryoujal, Red and Megumi go swimming to grab drowning survivors, and there are a lot. Ryoujal and Red could have a competition to number of people saved while Megumi is just working to ensure no more die. They toss the survivors onto the liferaft that Orillian is quickly building from the wreckage of various ships. Once they've rescued a reasonable number of survivors and figure that the rest are probably already drowned, that's when Megumi and Orillian join in the salvage effort while Red and Ryoujal tend to the survivors. For all that their animas are flaring to proclaim their Solar status, the survivors seem remarkably unperturbed by it and accept the help gratefully. Maybe it has to do with nearly dying.
Regardless, now that three Solars are working on salvage, Syn's competitive nature kicks in and she begins searching harder. She comes up with even more supplies and also manages to grab a set of silksails. Orillian does credibly well although the time spent rescuing the survivors means most of the artifacts have already sunk to the bottom of the ocean or been swept away. He does come up with two torcs of unified action, spat out by the demons who ate the bearers. He also finds an elemental lens. That leaves Megumi to mainly find supplies and some mundane shipboard weapons that her mortal crew will be able to use.
Now that their work here appears to be finished, Megumi looks over the loot. Not bad, for as little damage as was done to her own ship. "Ok. Let's get out of here before anyone thinks to shoot at us some more."
Big Red climbs back on board "So what now? Where do we go from here?"
Ryoujal sees that the survivors are alright and aren't going to die in the next few minutes. He then waves them goodbye, hops into the water, then gives them a good push towards the remaining ship of theirs.
Orillian remains aboard the raft, tending to the wounded, though as most of his essence is spent, at the moment he's limited to mundane work.
Megumi shrugs. "Good question. Now that we're back in Creation, we should probably visit home for some rest and refit."
It takes a while more before the storm subsides and the waters become relatively peaceful once more. While there is a lot of flotsam and jetsam, there is also a substantial number of a fleet remaining in the waters. Now they really manage to get a look at the sandwich ship and are obviously uncertain how to react.
Big Red says, "Refit would be good. We can't continue to sail around on a sandwich. I might just eat the ship if we do."
Megumi says, "Indeed."
To (Lady Syn, Shorlixa), Orillian pages: In Syn's head, Orillian recognizes the torcs of unified action as his body recovers them. "Aye! That's the stuff! Now maybe we can rig something up to get me out of here..."
Ryoujal swims to the ship, "Alright, Orillian patched the survivors up as best they can, and I pushed them in the direction of their comrades. Now I think that we should get out of here unitl they realize that we're not some sort of hallucination."
Lady Syn replies "Great" as she quickly retreats within the ship to avoid identification. It’s bad enough that they are in this ship with witnesses around.
Big Red says, "I don't believe we have to worry about them. They just got done with a fight they were losing. I bet there not eager to start another."
Megumi glances at Red and shrugs. "If you'd like to try talking to them, I guess we can hail them before we go."
Ryoujal says, "I don't know, since know we're special and all, they might think they can take our dinky little sandwich ship..."
To (Lady Syn, Shorlixa), Orillian pages: Eh, I for one wonder what they all were doing out _here_...
Big Red shakes his head. "It wouldn't hurt. We just did them a big favor. It might be nice to have people in the Realm that owe us a favor.
Megumi shrugs. "Very well. Contact the nearest ship, then."
Big Red says, "Besides if things do go bad we dive and get the hell out of here."
Big Red waits for the helm to bring us up close to the other vessels and hails a greeting.
Lady Syn says, "You can come ask them when you're one person again. Me, I'm hiding below so no one associates me with this eye sore."
Ryoujal pulls out his calzone and keeps an eye if there is a build up of essence that might indicate weapon charging.
The survivors are pushed towards the remainder of their fleet with a few words of thanks. Actually, they seem remarkably relaxed about having been rescued by Anathema. Curious perhaps. The nearest ship is a short distance away but they refrain from firing upon the sandwich since said sandwich is carrying a liferaft full of survivors. They're probably waiting on someone on the sandwich to say something first though and declare their intentions.
Megumi pats Red on the shoulder. "Your move."
Orillian observes the proceedings, ready to pull out his hammer and dismantle the enemy ships if they open fire.
Big Red tips his hat to the other crew "I believe that we found something that belongs to you" points to the life raft "Who's in charge here so we can return your people?"
Ryoujal sheathes his claws and does his best to smile and wave friendly at the Dynasts.
There's some movement aboard the ship and a dragon-blooded captain proceeds to the front to speak. Her anima is flaring brilliantly as well, identifying her as a Water Aspect. Now that the Solars are looking, they will also realise a lack of identifying flags or insignias anywhere. Not that they had seen any before and during the battle either. "Greetings. I am the captain of this ship. We thank you for returning our people to us. What do we owe for this favour?" As she speaks, the rest of the fleet is moving towards their current position.
Big Red says, "The only thing I ask is for you to answer some questions captain. Your people are free to go."
The captain gestures for some of her crew to pick up the liferaft of survivors while nodding cautiously. "That sounds reasonable, depending on the questions you may ask."
Big Red says, "What brings you this far West? So close to the wyld."
"Our travels bring us to the Wyld." The captain replies as if the answer was obvious. By now, the survivors have been towed to the ship to be brought up to the deck and tended to.
Big Red says, "Why? The wyld is no place people go becuse it sounds fun. You must have a reason."
Megumi listens attentively
Lady Syn grabs Ori so he can work that he can work on getting himself together.
The dragon-blooded doesn't seem to know how to answer, then pauses for a few moments before nodding. "Our captain will speak with you. You may ask her your questions." She mutters something to herself and her anima flares up again before the ship is slowly rowed away from the sandwich, together with the survivors. Another ship comes forward to address the sandwich, and it is obviously the flagship from the way it is bristling with armaments and the incredible work done on the ship. It doesn't show any current sign of hostility though and there is an Air Aspect standing on the deck to address them. Her anima too is flaring brightly from the recent exertion of battle. "You will speak with me Anathema." She calls out in a strong voice. "We use the Wyld to further our cause. I will refrain from querying your presence out of respect, but I suggest you get to the point quickly. We have wounded to tend to and need to make port."
Orillian follows absent-mindedly. "Oh, did you need something Syn?"
Big Red looks a little put off by the turn of events "Okay then. You called us Anathema. Dose that mean your Dynast?"
Lady Syn says, "Yes. You out of my mind. Followed by making things less fuzzy. And then plans for this ship becoming something that doesn't make me consider taking a long swim away from."
"I call you Anathema because you are Anathema. Do you ask a flower why it is called a flower? But no, this fleet does not belong to the Realm and I am no dynast." She is blunt and answers a little impatiently.
Big Red says, "Us being Anthema is a matter of opinion. And it seems you've made up your about us. I has hoping we could come to some kind of understanding but it seems you want no of that."
Orillian scratches his head. "Ahh. The torcs."
"What do you mean matter of opinion? Your animas are obviously flaring and so you are obviously Solar Anathema." She says it as a statement of fact as opposed to the usual hatred the term usually encompasses. "What understanding do you wish to come to? As I said before, come to the point quickly. I have no wish to dally as I have my crew to tend to."
Ryoujal says, "Well just to know what the heck the battle was about, other than just wiping out pirates would be nice...."
Orillian says, "Right. Let's see what we can do with these..."
Orillian gives one torc to Syn.
Lady Syn holds it. "Now what?"
Orillian says, "Attuning would probably be the first step."
Big Red gets a more then a little mad "Listen we just saved your ass. If we hadn't of popped out of that storm when we did that sea beast would of had you for lunch. As it is now I am starting to regret the decision to help you. I was hope we could exchange some friendly words and maybe favors do at a future date, but I am growing tired of your attitude."
Ryoujal says, "I thought we were going to be all friendly and not agitate them?"
"The Lintha attacked us, so we attacked back. That's what happened. And we didn't really need your help. If things had turned bad, we would have retreated." The dragon-blooded answers bluntly. "What attitude were you expecting? I'm treating with you and speaking politely. You're the one getting all angry."
Megumi rocks back on her heels. "Easy, Red. There's a few thousand years of built-up universal hatred behind the name. She may not know another name to call us by."
Lady Syn attunes it.
Orillian spends the last of his Essence pool to attune the other one.
Big Red turns to the Megumi "Unless you want to give this a try, I am done here. I don't think I'll get anywhere with them."
Megumi sighs. Fine. "You appear to be neither Realm nor Lookshy in origin. How does such a substantial dragonblooded force assemble out here in Threshold? You must have some purpose here."
"We're pirates." The Air Aspect answers simply.
Megumi nods. "Ah, something we've in common. Purely pirate, or privateers working as agents of one of the island nations out here?"
Ryoujal says, "Ah, good on you. Must be doing pretty good business with the ships you have."
From afar, to (Lady Syn, Shorlixa): Orillian thinks, "Hmm, now how to get me over there...
"We're pirates and make war against the Guild." She answers proudly. "We are beholden to nothing and no one. And yes, we do extremely well."
When Syn and Orillian attune to the torcs, they become rather uncomfortably aware of each other. And Orillian seems to get a little echo of the thought that his fragment just mentioned to Syn.
Orillian raises an eyebrow. "Ahh. There you are."
To (Lady Syn, Shorlixa), Orillian pages: Aye, ye empty-headed dumbass."
Lady Syn says, "Yeah yeah. Now, can you pull yourself together and leave me thoughts to meself?"
Megumi says, "I'm no friend of the Guild, but I wonder: what has it done to earn such enmity from you?"
Orillian hmphs. "Like I really want to stay in - ahh, there we go." He turns to the captain of the other ship. "If ye be so successful, I don't suppose ye be unionized? The pay be crap over here."
"It raided my village and took my people as slaves. The Guild perpetuates all manners of injustice in this world. Why should it not earn my enmity?" The dragon-blooded declares.
Orillian nods. "Sound like a good reason."
Ryoujal says, "Fair enough"
Megumi nods. "I see. We may be of some use to each other, if you would be interested in working jointly from time to time."
"Perhaps." The Air Aspect answers. "How shall I address the captain and the unique...ship?" There's a slight pause as she tries to decide what to call the sandwich and politely settles on ship.
Megumi sighs. "The nature of the ship is a purely temporary condition, brought about by prolonged exposure to the Wyld. I am known as the Stormbreaker."
The dragon-blooded appears to be familiar with the name, nodding with a small measure of respect. "I have heard of you Stormbreaker. Perhaps I should not be surprised that you are present, for the storms bring you and we had such a storm. I am Eos Atitha." A name which anyone who's been travelling the West should certainly know of. And Red, being a member of the Guild, will definitely have heard of. Excessively high bounty on her head too.
Big Red says, "Eos Athitha. That explains it."
Megumi nods. "I know of your name as well. Now, is there some way we can be of some further assistance?" Good to forge ties..
Ryoujal lets out a long, impressed whistle.
Orillian shakes his head. "Y'know, all the tales I hear say ye be easier on the eyes. Could ye maybe turn around a bit, show us yer good side?"
Megumi faceplants. Well, at least he seems to be back.
Ryoujal gently bops Orillian on the head and whispers, "Don't insult the lady with the fleet surrounding us... It's just not proper."
Orillian coughs. "Sorry, just be testing me snark legs again."
The Air Aspect shakes her head. "You have rendered enough assistance by saving some of my men. For that, we are grateful. But there is nothing we need as of now. I am sure we will meet again, and if you have Guild targets, I will be happy to be of assistance. Do you have a sorcerer? We may keep in contact with spells." She seems to bristle slightly at Orillian's comment, but decides not to take offense. Yet.
Lady Syn thinks very loud and annoyed thoughts at Ori.
Megumi faceplants. "Yeah, um, he'd be the one."
Orillian waves. "Just kiddin' lass. Very easy on the eyes."
Ryoujal says, "Well I think they're as steady as ever."
Megumi bows briefly. "Well, I suppose that concludes our time together for the moment. Perhaps we'll see each other again - hopefully on terms at least this positive."
"Perhaps." With those tenuous words of possible alliance, Eos Atitha nods and signals to her fleet. And her entire fleet sails into the Wyld, vanishing into its chaotic depths, leaving the Solars on their own, to sail as they will.
