#1 Added by Lacuna 4 years ago
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#2 Added by Binarabi 4 years ago
#3 Added by Cidreuppercut 4 years ago
#4 Added by Lacuna 4 years ago
#5 Added by Lacuna 4 years ago
Last edited by Lacuna (4 years ago)
#6 Added by Binarabi 4 years ago
Last edited by Binarabi (4 years ago)
#7 Added by Lacuna 1 week ago
[OOC This is a tale told by an unreliable narrator, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.]Lacuna’s head hurt. It always hurt when she tries to remember or to concentrate one idea too long. Images flitted across her mind’s eye. She sits by the fading campfire and watches the flames flicker. The camp is quiet with only a few marauder still awake. Something is wrong. She does not know why, but there was something profoundly wrong. It does not feel like home anymore. Had it ever been? Yes. Yes, when her sisters were with her, it had been home.
She misses her sisters. They had told her where they were going but she has forgotten. She forgets so easily. She knows now it can be put off no longer, she must make a choice - to stay or go.
The decision is not easy but she will go to the Old Lands; she will seek out Melkiar, maybe he will know where her sisters are or, at the very least, what is wrong with the camp. She looks around in the fast falling light and the faces seem familiar but they are wrong. She does not know why, but they are wrong.
She stands up and slings her backpack across her shoulders, picks up her bucklr and spear, and walks out into the night.
#8 Added by Lacuna 7 days ago
Tears run unnoticed down Lacuna’s cheeks. The song fills her head making thoughts hard to form. She does not want to get lost in it again. She sits by her campfire and stares into her cup. Memories come unbidden…
~~~~
Lacuna sits in the corner of a bar in Fairhaven brooding over her drink. She can hear the song again, niggling, calling her back.
She had decided to check out the nations first for her sisters before heading to the Old Lands. Her longing for the comfort of sisterhood outweighing the need to understand the wrongness of the marauder camp. Yrkanis had been a complete dead-end. Even though the trail lead her there, there was no definite sign of her sisters in the city: though there was an unsubstantiated rumour of a homine matching Marikka description getting into a brawl with the city guard. She had searched the city for any of the sigils that Lost Girls use to pass on messages to no avail. Searching had been a nightmare due to her undeserved reputation as a Jena hating she-devil. Seriously, the Matis had a collective stick up their butt, no wonder they run so funnily.
It was only a few pornographic cartoons of their so-called goddess, and the charge of murder was way over-the-top. How can the accidental deaths of a few homins be murder. They were all male! Surely that counted as a civic service. But oh no, the holier-than-thou, pasty faced yelk-farts called it ‘an unprovoked brutal assault.’ A minor misdemeanour, of defacing property was all it should have been. If anything she should have had compensation for her dress being completely ruined. She never asked them to run up screaming about blasphemy. And if you are going to attack an innocent, defenceless homine going about her law abiding business, you deserved to get stabbed. Admittedly, the last guard had technically been running away at the time, but still, it was a simple matter of self-defence. It was three against one, how could it not be self-defence! Males!
Anyway, ever since then the Matis had treated her as persona non-grata. That hurt. It was not like she was evil, like Mithian or Rykal, or a unsanitary, public nuisance like Revvy. Consequently, she had been forced to sneak about the city after dark trying to find any sign of her sisters, all because the Matis couldn’t take a joke. As for the charge of intimidation, how could the helpful suggestion of the need to buy fire insurance be considered a crime! Everyone knew how easy Matis were to set on fire. She had just tried to be helpful; and this was her reward.
After a week, she had finally had to admit defeat and travelled south to Heretic’s Hovel and the portal to Aeden Aqueous.
Fairhaven had proved to be no more productive than Yrkanis, though easier to search. Lacuna hated Liberty Lakes and had never came here to raid much, so the Trykers knew her mainly by reputation. Though the Lost Girl Orphan’s Fund scam did mean that her name was mud here too. Seriously, what as wrong with some homins. They only said they were collecting money for orphans; they never said they were, actually, going to give the money to them! It was all Marichia’s fault! Lacuna had just wanted to suggest to a few merchants that travelling without protection was dangerous, but no, Marchia had to get clever. To be fair, the scheme worked extremely well, especially when they combined it with the feathered amps scam. It was amazing what you could get a male to believe - add some glitter and feathers, tell them it was boosted and they fell over themselves to give you their dappers. Idiots!
She wonders where she should go next. She very much doubts her sisters have gone to any of the desert cities; they all hate the Fyros’ slavish devotion to Ma-Duck, not to mention the average Fyros male’s deplorable hygiene habits. As for Zora, she hadn’t been back there since she and Spettra were thrown out of GoS. Saying that, it might be worth checking out the stashes they’d had to leave when they fled the Cities of Intuition for the sanctuary of the marauder camp…
Edited 3 times | Last edited by Lacuna (4 days ago)
#9 Added by Lacuna 4 days ago
[OOC This is a true and honest tale told by an unreliable narrator, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing*]
Lacuna stands near the gates to the Cemetery District staring at Zora Stables, lost in time. Bitter-Bittersweet memories come unbidden…
Zora had once been home. She remembers being led by Astarth on the terrifying, exhilarating winter trek from the desert through the Knot of Dementia and on to Zora. Her first sight of a Gibbai. But she had been happy here. She remembers the hours she spent sat at these stables planning with Spettra about going marauder. Lost Girls had been born at this very spot.
She remembers travelling between Zora and the Fyros homelands in her drive to master her desert foraging skills. The long conversations with Hiang Vo-Nuang on her return from the desert to discuss her progress. Looking back she can recognise if for the obsession it was, and how it would lead to her love of the Prime Roots. Her old guild master, Binarabi, had even resorted to forcing her to train her melee and magic skills in an attempt to make her less ‘squishy’, as she put it. But Lacuna mastered foraging long before being even close to mastering anything else. She even gave up on craft training, selling all the shield and staff materials she foraged so she could spend more time digging. As soon as she mastered the desert she started her explorations of the Prime Roots. Her first tentative steps in the Lands of Umbra led her to digging in Under Spring. She remembers how Binarabi paid Alric to protect them through Trench of Trials while she and Eikichi guided her to Fairhaven. It was on this trek that she first heard the allure of the song.
The desire to survive in Prime Roots motivated her to train her melee and magic skills. As the noise of the passing crowd intrudes, she remembers the hours spent training with Ozelott, Cyndalia and Astarth, of slowly becoming more skilled. Her pride at mastering her healing skills. The months she spent hunting with Lee and Agan. Foxy crafting her a set of Shooketh amps. Karabas crafting her first two-hand mace: the satisfaction of knocking Eikichi out with it. Nuno teaching her the secret to balancing a weapon to maximise its speed. Sneaking through the Westgrove gate into Highgrove with Fitis to finish mastering her offensive magic skills. The guild gathering in Min-Cho to present her with a beautiful Kara Klyde blade, crafted by Crafy, after Tao Nai-Da declared she had mastered the one-hand sword. Nagging Gasket into helping her master defensive afflictions until he gave in just so he could go back to getting drunk at the stables.
Lacuna remembers the sheer terror and excitement of stumbling round Atys and Prime Roots, more often lost than not, with Binarabi to collect teleport pacts after she passed the Kami rite. Trying to work out who in the guild had managed to craft a degraded q247 rubbarn weapon tool. Trying to learn the Crafy ‘shuffle’ to glide through Prime Roots unnoticed. Swimming with Leonora at the waterfall west of Still Waters. Training on great kinreys in Demon’s Lap with Neama, Generallee and Puffe. Trying to explain to Ink why she loved the Roots, and why lumpers were evil. Her and Spettra plugging their ears with wax to block out Suboxide’s interminable political discussions during guild meetings. After her first extended sojourn into the Roots, Eruv giving her her first set of maga-amps and a set of boosted focus attuned jewels. Jewels she still carries to this day.
Later, when she as well on the way to knowing the Prime Roots, she experienced the euphoria and chaos of killing Jugukoo with only an extremely drunk Gasket and Gaskette. The frustration of Rollocks ‘helping’ her dig supremes at the change of seasons. Digging supreme yana node in the Lands of Continuity while Binarabi supposedly guarded her, but in reality read romantic stories about homins who seemed to wear nothing but heavy armour boots. Trying to teach Ozelott how to hold her nerve and sneak her way through the predators and kitin to dig. Spending months hunting named with Spettra. The satisfaction of when the two of them were able to kill the likes of Ryx, Rippa and Bukah wearing nothing but light armour and a medium armour vest. Looking back she wonders why they both refused to wear heavy armour. That aversion changed after they started to hunt the apex boss creatures of Atys. After years of study and exploration finally understanding the weather and the ecology of materials of Prime Roots, when they were available and when they would refill.
The months spent digging in the Void, often with Eruv and Astarth helping her master her jungle foraging skills rises in her mind.
~~~~~
She woke up lying in her bed in GoS guild house. For a moment she does not know where she is, and she has no idea how she got here. The last thing she remembers is… She groans as the memory comes back of the explosion. She had been talking to Spettra about her growing frustration with the Kami Alliance, and had not been paying enough attention to the node of dung resin she was digging. She realises that Binarabi is sitting at the end of the bed, shaking her head at her. Lacuna groans, Oh No! This is going to be another I told you so lecture.
‘Spettra brought you back. You were at the epicentre of your little explosion, but, luckily, nearby diggers were able to revive Spettra in time. Your mektoubs are dead, by the way. Even Rollocks would struggle to take out three packers and one mount in one go. So well done!’ The speech dripped with sarcasm.
Lacuna lay back down and groaned. What was worse, it was all her own fault. She had been warned, and knew, that digging right next to her packers was stupid and far too risky, but the time saved walking to them to unload her bag seemed worth the risk. She smells the first sign of food burning, and malicious smile forms as Binarabi runs from her room. She’s not the only one who can make mistakes…
For a while she had been happy here. She mastered amp and light armour crafts. Her first tentative steps towards understanding how to balance an amplifier recipe and teasing out the secret of max dodge black light armour brought a sense of accomplishment. But her growing dissatisfaction with the greed of Kami alliance, who would stab each other in the back as readily as fight the Karavan, meant it could not last. Nothing ever does.
Lacuna came back to herself. There was no sign of her sisters in Zora, nothing that was not years old or less substantial than rumour. No one had touched the stashes she and Spettra secretly hid in Zora. It was time to move on; the guards were starting to take note of her. The song was getting louder; she needed to find her sisters soon. She needed to decide: the Old Lands or the desert. She had been putting off this decision for too long. The Burning Desert it was: she mounted her mektoub and trotted out the city gates for the last time.
[OOC One male was hurt in the telling of this tale; sadly he made a full recovery.]
*Some details have been changed to maintain RP continuity.
#10 Added by Lacuna 2 days ago
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