00 Around The Fire - Open Role Play

[Ndreare]

In the hushed wilderness under a star-speckled sky, a group of science fiction soldiers gather around flickering campfires, their silhouettes casting long shadows on the rugged terrain. Clad in futuristic armor and clutching advanced weaponry, these warriors appear as interstellar nomads, etching a moment of respite in their arduous journey.

The fires crackle and pop, as flames dance and cast a warm, glow against the cool blue of the star filled night. The soldiers, some seated and others standing, carry expressions of weariness tinged with resolve. Their faces are illuminated intermittently by the firelight, revealing a mix of determination and contemplation.

Around them, the wilderness stretches out, a mix of sparse vegetation and rocky ground. The inhospitable forest strangely serene under for the moment. The atmosphere holds a tense, charge as each is aware at any moment something could interupt the brief respit.

As you gather around the fires, sharing silent looks, nods and occational words there's an understanding among those gathered. So far none have been lost, but that does not mean the journey will be safe.


THIS IS AN OPEN RP AREA. PLEASE INTRODUCE YOURSELVES AND EARN A CONVICTION BY INTERACTING WITH EACH OTHER.

[Dara]

Firelight glinting off her mirrored shades, Dara strides towards the group encircling the fire. Tinny clinking identifies the cylinder she is carrying on one shoulder as being a metal… barrel of some sort. She slips catlike between the humans in the group, as they form the widest gap in the circle. Rolling the barrel down one arm and setting it on the ground, she eyes Dorn up and down for a moment. Then she turns her head toward Lumo and repeats the gesture, this time craning her neck up slightly more. “Hmmmph!” she mutters heading back toward the Smokeskipper that Drexler has been so anxious to modify. Some rummaging and a few metallic clunks later she returns with a second container over her opposite shoulder.

This time she elbows past Nyx in an affable way, muttering, “I didn’t believe you when you told me they let you choose your own clothes here!” Tiny servos in the Gladius Exoskeleton make muted noises in the silence around the campfire as she sets down the second barrel. With her other hand, she shoves an apparatus wrapped in copper wire and bearing a couple quartz crystals into the top of the container.

“When I passed through the… Barony of Hope I traded my old talisman to a… what do you call them?”
“A beer wizard… yes! I only wanted one… keg? Yes, but he insisted on giving me two… and this device for emptying them. He seemed very eager to make the deal. At any rate… this beverage he called Juicy Bits.” She taps a finger on the hastily painted markings on the side of the keg for emphasis.

“I find that name quite disturbing actually, but the bits he renders into the juice make it quite delicious. The bearded wizard told me the recipe came from a time before the return… er… the coming of the rifts.” Dara smiles proudly at her mastery of the lingo.

She begins filling the tin cup she carries around camp on her belt, and continues, “I do not know what lies ahead of us on the path, but I do remember the words of a… Savi… Sovi…Sovietski I once captured.”

Raising her cup, and beaming a wide grin, “Who does not take risks, does not drink champagne.”

[Miles RAD Radoslav]

Sitting a bit outside the circle of humans, Rad turns and spits the stick he was chewing out into the night, then pulls another from a pocket of his black fatigues and twirls it between his figures. "Can't say as I've ever had champagne. Back when I trained in Lazlo, there was a fellow there who claimed to have dropped through a Rift from the old days. A fighter, and a damn good one too. His old unit had a different motto, and we adopted it for ours - "Who Dares, Wins". He stands and makes his way to Dara, extending his hand. "Miles Radoslav, late of the 3rd Lazlo Black Watch Commandos, at your service."

[Nyx]

This time she elbows past Nyx in an affable way, muttering, “I didn’t believe you when you told me they let you choose your own clothes here!”

Nyx opens an eye at the nudge, slipping her earphones away from one gracefully pointed ear to hear what the Altaran says. A whisper of upbeat music can be heard coming from the headset before Nyx switches it off, the tranquil look on her face replaced with the more-familiar sneer, accentuated by her scars.

"Oh, just wait. They 'let' you wash them yourself, too." She wrinkles her nose in the direction of the over-sized dwarf. "If you're the sort that ever changes them."

Standing up, the lithe elf stretches, the matte carapace of her repurposed Dead Boy armor seeming to drink the light from the fire. The scars criss-crossing one side of her face are hard to miss, but do little to distract from her looks — though the hard glint in her eye serves as a warning to any would-be suitors.

"You were lucky to get out of Hope with nothing more than a couple of barrels of beer," she says to Dara, who is used to her moods. "Last time I was there I ended up gut-shot and indebted to a psychic healer who wanted to convert me to the one true way, or something. But that was ... years ago."

Staring off into the darkness, the elf can be seen muttering to herself, her thumbs absently stroking the grips of the massive pistols holstered at her waist. She abruptly smiles, the grin seeming plastered on her face through force of will. "A drink sounds good — who needs a mug if I fetch one from the transport?"

[Lumo]

An extremely large smoke ring wafts over to Dara, carrying with it a familiar skunky odor that would make it easy to recognize its origin. The giant six armed woman appeared to be trying her best not to stand out by sitting up against a protruding boulder with her legs up against her chest, but it was easy to see that she was clearly the largest target of the group even seated as she was. In her upper right hand appeared to be a long handled pipe that wafted a small line of the smoke into the air.

Somewhat bleary eyed looking and wearing a strange assortment of decorative ceremonial straps, furs, feathers, bones and jewelry, her attire did not do her any favors in the goal of going unnoticed as well.

“I would..” Came a soft voice laced with smoke from the large figure. “… Like to try. Unless you are going to drink it all.” The one called Lumo asked, as purple eyes drifted towards the barrels, where one so large as her might feasibly think that this was one persons portion of drink for the eve. Her other hands seemed to curiously beckon towards the odd objects before taking another long inhale from the pipe, slowly allowing the smoke to trickle out of her nose as she slowly rose to her feet, towering an easy 13 feet tall before sitting cross legged once more next to the barrels, pointing briefly towards their attachments.

“What is the wire and stone for? Does it pass… Current through it?” Where her expression became just a little more interested as she was moments away from touching the exposed metal. Though she paused a hair before doing so as an intense look of concentration washed over her features before looking downwards towards Miles, Dara and Nyx . “You already know, they all already know. But I am Lumo.” Came her much simpler introduction when compared to Miles, though in all fairness when you towered above all of the others, everyone quickly learned who you were by word of mouth before introductions became necessary.