ROLEPLAY

[OOC This is a tale told by an unreliable narrator, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.]


Lacuna misses her sister, Marichia, bitterly. Marichia’s role in this is will be the hardest. She stifles a sob in case she wakes Spettra. Today had been hard, and her sister needed her rest, as will she when her turn comes to sleep.  She stirs the glowing embers of the camp fire and glances at the sleeping outline of her blood-sister.  She wonders at this new thing. Often, she had suffered cold while patiently trying to tease out mats from her beloved Prime Roots, and now this… She stands up and kicks the dead Matis male in the head. Idiot. He thought the fire would keep him safe through the night, like the comfort blanket his mother, no doubt, gave him.  The fire kept one warm, and offered protection from things that lurked in the dark places.  But fire also attracted their attention - a double edged blessing, much like Spettra’s axe.  These fires will make them weak. Good!  She would drag the idiot’s corpse out beyond the Ruins of Cryton Farm later.  The gruesome kirosta that had taken to following her and Spettra needed feeding if it was to grow strong. It had stopped trying to kill them a week ago, and now it seemed content to eat the gifts she and Spettra provided.  Lacuna stands and smiles, maliciously.  Soon, if she and Spettra successful, males would die.

    She walks back to the camp fire and extinguishes it by pouring out the beer she found in the male’s bag.  She sits on her haunches and listens to the Song of the Prime Roots as she keeps watch. Lacuna has no memories of divergent histories, as many homines do. But then she cares little if Thesos was burned or not, only that it will soon.  She has no memory of whether parasite kings died well or not.  Inconstancies of cultural memory do not bother Spettra.  Whenever Lacuna asks her about it, Spettra merely shrugs and says, ‘Males.’

    Lacuna’s first memory is of waking in the ranger camp in Silan, and the cruel, ugly, leering Matis face chasing her to consciousness.  A face that haunts her dreams and waking hours to this day… and the lumpers. No one ever believes her about the lumpers.  She scowls. But memories will not hold in her head.  They shift, meld, and at times she wonders if she is not confusing dreams with memories.  Misremembering.  The word hurts.  She does not know it, but, as is so often the case, it is there in her head - a niggling itchy word.  She wonders if Spettra has any sweets hidden in her bag and her thoughts slip away.  Silan.  It was here that Lacuna met Generallee, one of the very few males who deserve to live.  

    Lee taught her the love the hunt, the kill.  She had tried to teach him her love of digging, of splitting one’s mind in two - so as to achieve communion with to the Bark.  How to listen to the rhythm of weather, season and hour, and the harsher discordances in the songs of kitin and other predators. Communion? Discordances?  She snorts at the memory of Lee sticking his pick through his own foot when he tried to follow her lessons. Males. But Lee was gone.  He lied; he promised he would come back.  There was no honour in the Burning Desert now, only greed.  Her thoughts turn to the surface.  She knows others think of her as Fyros, but she feels nothing for the desert, and the cowards and hypocrites who pay lip service to the ideals of an imaginary god.  To her, the desert is as bad as the Forest, where liars, frauds and sycophants crawl on their bellies and abase themselves in front of their worthless nobles.  The Witherings is full of mystics lost in a fog of moss and love of their own cleverness.  To her, the Trykers care for nothing but the debauchery of alcohol and profit.  And the marauder camp appears to be little more than a bordello now.  Hairdressers!  Rather than luring weapon crafters and warriors to camp, they lured hairdressers! Pffft.  I suppose one cannot start a revolution unless one has the perfect dye and cut.  She gives an envious glance at Spettra’s long pink queue, and bites the ends of her own fringe.  She sneers at those who are slinking back into the nations to beg for forgiveness and the scraps from their master’s tables.  As for the Rangers… well at least their meddling has brought back the KP.  She gloats at the thought of how many males must have died, maybe even a few too badly hurt to resurrect.  And now there are fools who proclaim Tryton a saviour, and whisper freedom while they cling even harder to their chains. As usual, thoughts of the surface make her rage.

    She smiles at a memory of Astarth giving her her first axe.  The smile breaks into a grin at the thought of the first time she buried the axe in Eikichi’s back as he slept at Zora stables.  She wonders if Gasket will ever work out what she watered his beer down with.  Gasket.  She cannot remember if she killed him, or not. The jagged memory a Tryker lying face down in the mud, with her spear buried in his back, intrudes.  ‘I’m not evil,’ she mumbles. ‘I told him. I’m lovely!’  A little giggle escapes her lips at the thought of Eruv’s bloody, drunken suicides as he tried to teach her how to dig Prime Roots.  Her thoughts turn to other lost friends… Karrael, Kiela, Leonora, and Ink.  

    Ink. Lacuna deeply misses Ink. Ink had shown her how to start not being afraid.  But Ink had fed the lumpers and so she had to go away.  Lacuna often goes back to Furtive Waters to see her.  After Ink went away, Lacuna wandered the Prime Roots for a long time. She shunned the company of others and dwelt on her sadness and grief.  It was now that she learned to listen to the Song of Prime Roots.  And it was the Song that stopped the sadness and loneliness from consuming her.  When she finally returned to the surface, she sought out old friends.  She tried, for what felt like an eternity, to teach Binarabi and Ozelott the Song, and how this would let them move through and dig Prime Roots.  For a while, she harboured spiteful little thoughts that they were male, or were being deliberately suicidal just to annoy her.  Later, she realised that it was false consciousness that stopped them from hearing the Song.  GoS was infested with males, the guild, like Atys, needed cleansed.  False consciousness? Her head was starting to hurt again. This always happened when she thought too deeply, or tried to remember too much.

    It was soon after her return to the surface that Lacuna met her sister, Spettra.  Though Lacuna was told she Fyros, and Spettra was obviously Tryker, both she and Spettra recognised each other as kindred souls.  Spettra had only recently arrived from Silan.  As a means of distracting herself from the call of the Song, she volunteered to help Spettra train her combat skills.  She was afraid that she would answer the Song and never be able to return.  Soon they were training together every day.  Lacuna taught Spettra the lessons she had learned from Lee and, in turn, Spettra taught Lacuna that she was not alone.  She helped Lacuna through the terrors in her head, and helped her see that males were not to be feared, they were to be killed!  

    Lacuna stands, kicks the dead male again. I’m not evil!  She drags the corpse to the out-skirts of the abandoned op. She can hear the kirosta; it seems to be impatient for her to leave.  She wonders if Spettra’s decision to name the kirosta, Gaalh [Blood], will be prophetic.  Maybe tomorrow night Gaalh will finally enter their camp to feed.  Soon they will find a way into the Deep Roots, and, hopefully, there they will find a way to kill males beyond the higher powers ability resurrect them.  

 

Some spoke of a dragon…  

[OOC Sadly no males were harmed in the writing of this tale.]

Ny-Lacuna

This is a tale of tenderness and beauty and I am proud to have known such a Warrior and Prime Roots Goddess, much love to you, sister, and may all paths be filled with dead Matis Males (not the ones on the "save" list though)

does more press ups and sits in 11deg for more brown fat.
doesn't mention anything about evil heartbreakers :o}

p.s. outrage we demand to be mentioned :o} (sbx marce)

If I finish the second part of this, you find out the true and honest history of how Marceline learned to walk on the wild side and Lost Girls came to be, and why Ghuiss is in hiding:P

[OOC The true and honest history of how Marceline learned to walk on the Wild Side and Lost Girls came to be.]

As she carefully finished sharpening the point of her spear, her thoughts turned again to blood, and revenge against her mortal enemy, Ghuiss. Hopefully, she would find his hiding hole soon.  She was sure he had hidden himself somewhere in Roots.  In the past months, she had tried all the bars on the surface, and there was no sign of the drunkard.  No one she talked to had seen him.  She had even stalked his partner-in-crime, Gasket, for a month hoping he would lead her to the Zorai’s hiding place.  But all she learned from that was that Gasket had some serious public hygiene issues.  She traces Ghuiss’s name on her spear point with her finger and smiles. Ghuiss will pay dearly for forgetting her birthday!  She places the spear back beside her pack. She worries about Spettra. Her sister has been gone for many days now.  They had decided to separate in an attempt to speed up their search.  She was to search the Wastelands for a entrance into the Deep Roots and Spettra the Lands of Umbra.   They had agreed to meet in the Keepers’ camp, but she has lost track of time and does not know if she is early, or Spettra late.  So she worries.  There is no sign of Gaalh, either. She wonders if the kirosta has followed Spettra.  So she sits and waits, and tries not to let the sadness in.

Even though helping Spettra’s train her combat skills distracted her, the Song soon started to call Lacuna again.  She began to return to PR for longer and longer periods. Often Spettra would join her.  Together they explored and hunted for days at time before returning to the guild.  Each time they returned, Lacuna felt less and less at home.  It was not that her guild did not welcome, it was just she felt she did not belong.  She was also having serious doubts as to the intentions of the Kami Alliance.  She felt the sadness start to grow in her again, and the gaps between her visits to Zora grew longer. She is sure that is how it was, but remembering is like trying to catch a falling leaf. Yes. It all started with Marceline.

                                                               ~~~

Binarabi was furious. Lacuna could tell.  That vein on her forehead was throbbing. It always did when someone in the guild went too far with a joke.  Lacuna tried to hide behind Spettra, which was not easy as Spettra was half her size.  She hates it when Bina shouts at her.  She loves Bina, but wishes she would stop coddling useless males, like Eikichi.  Now would be a bad time for Bina to find out that Eikichi has had yet another accident.
     ‘He could have DIED!’ she screamed at them.  ‘What were you two thinking? No. No. Don’t answer that! Of course you weren’t thinking, neither of you ever do.’
    Spettra closed her mouth and the explanation died on her lips.
    ‘No. No. Tell me! I need to know what made you both think it was, in any way, acceptable to sneak into his room and.. and.. and…’
    ‘He asked us too,’ Lacuna whispered.
    ‘He was bloody joking!’ Bina scream at them. ‘Ma-Duk, can’t you two tell when someone is joking!’
    ‘If you think about it, it is his own fault. He never told us not to go into his room and cut it off,’ Spettra volunteered.
    Lacuna watched as Bina’s eyes went wide with complete and utter incomprehension. ‘WHAT!’ Things went downhill fast after that.

Spettra found Lacuna hiding in her bedroom.  ‘What was their decision?’
    ‘We’re out.’
    Spettra seemed surprisingly happy. Lacuna felt bad; it had been her idea. OK, Gasket was also to blame; he had gotten her drunk, and that led to… well… Marceline’s little operation.  It was always that yelk-fart Gasket’s fault. I’m not evil. He knew what happened when she drunk even the smallest amount of alcohol.  She still needed to get revenge for the Yrakanis incident.  It had taken months of community service to get her reputation back to the point where she could buy the LA and amp plans she needed.  It was not her fault that the Matis had no sense of humour.  It had only been a small fire, and the graffiti had washed off, eventually.  And all because Gasket got her drunk! The git.
    ‘What will we do now?’
    ‘Spettra smiled, ‘We go Mara and kill all males.’

                                                               ~~~

After after their relocation to the marauder camp, Lacuna felt happier than she could ever remember.  But it was not that until Marichia joined them that she finally felt content, and the sadness left her for a time.  Marichia is the kindest of them.  Lacuna suspects her sister thinks males are simply dumb farting hominoids, rather than vermin, and that she would be satisfied if all males were just to go off somewhere far, far, far away and… well… stink that place up.  She doubts Marichia shares her and Spettra’s longing for extermination.  

                                                               ~~~

    ‘Come back you bloody pervert!’
    Lacuna looked up from sorting out the complete mess that was her bag.  She saw a tall, slim Matis girl, brandishing a rather large mace, chasing a half-naked Zorai through the camp.  She realised that it was Marceline wearing the red shell thingies the Matis thought were appropriate for underwear. Grinning, she nudged Spettra.
    ‘Marceline is up to her old tricks again.’
    ‘Yap. I wonder why he… ummm… I mean she, is so obsessed with Matis undies?’
    They both still found it hard to to think of the tall Zorai as she, but… well… they were responsible, in a way, for her new gender identity, so they thought they should be supportive.  But if the sod tries on any more of my dresses I will gut him like weanling yubo.  As Marceline came racing past them, Spettra stuck out a foot, sending the Zorai sprawling in the dirt.  Marichia came running up to them.
    ‘Thanks.’
    Marichia then proceeded in what appeared to be an extremely enthusiastic attempt to break every bone in Marceline’s body. Lacuna picked up her mace and asked, ‘Want a hand with that?’  Marceline had to learn the hard-way, she guessed.  Spettra screamed, ‘You thieving shit, Marce!’; she had just noticed what looked like her favourite bra in Marceline’s hand.

                                                               ~~~

After Marceline’s lesson in what was not acceptable behaviour for a young homine, Marichia, Lacuna and Spettra quickly became inseparable.  It just seemed natural that Marichia would join them. Three was the perfect number.  They all knew they were not a guild, but a sisterhood. And for that, three sisters were needed.  And for a while all was calm.


She sits in the Keepers’ camp and plays with the friendship ring Spettra gave her.  She knows the words engraved inside it by heart.  Tears run down her cheeks whenever she thinks of them.  She misses her sisters.  She worries.  She fights the sadness and tries to listen to the Song.  She is startled back to the present by a commotion outside the camp. But it is just the guards fighting off a another KP.  Maybe tomorrow Spettra will arrive and they can continue their search.  She puts on her amplifiers and goes to help the guards patrol the perimeter of the camp.


[OOC Only the facts have been changed to protect the guilty.]

(OOC that is the funniest and bestest and saddest thing I have ever read - hugs hugs to you, Ghuiss is trembling in his boots!)

[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.

[OOC This is a tale told by an unreliable narrator, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.]

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…

[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.

[OOC This is a tale told by an unreliable narrator, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing]

She puts more eyota wood onto the dying campfire.  As sparks back into life and the the flames rise again, she picks up her cup and contemplates its contents.  As the song starts to fill her head…

She rode out of Zora to avoid letting anyone catch sight of her using her zun crystal, especially, now that it glows purple.  She wonders if this recent change portents.   She waited until she was out of sight of the Karavan teleporter before activating it to take her to the Savage Dunes.  She hates the desert but this must been done.  
    She ambushes and kills a lone digger, taking his mektoub and supplies so to make the journey to Thesos across the Kipucka Plain less arduous.  
    Thesos had been home once, just before she joined GoS.  She had spent weeks digging just outside Thesos before moving to the Flaming Forest.  She had bought an apartment here, and kept it until she turned marauder.  Too lazy to move her belongings to Zora, she all but abandoned the apartment.  She wonders who took possession of it, and what they made of her discarded odds and ends.  Did the try and work out what these discarded objects signified of their former owner?  She scouted the settlement out for a few nights, but there was no sign of her sisters.  She kept to the shadows and avoided the Fyros patriots; religious fanatics, little better than the Matis in their delusions and abasement before a ‘higher’ power.  Lacuna feels nothing but contempt for them.  When it became obvious nothing was to be learned of her sisters, she moved on.
    She’s not sure why she travelled to the border between Oflovak’s Oasis and the Imperial Dunes at Fourways.  It was here she first met Eruv and Rowwena, not long after leaving Silan, when the desert, never mind Atys, was still very much an unknown .  She and Rowwena quickly became friends even though they were so different.  Rowena wanting so badly to be a warrior and while Lacuna just wanted to explore and learn the weather and ecology of the land - to dig.  They trained together and ran missions to raise their fame with the Kami: killing bandits in the Imperial Dunes and Oflovak’s Oasis.   It is was her friendship with Rowenna that influenced her to accept the invitation to join GoS.  Her sisters are not here, nor is there any answer to the strangeness of the camp, so she travels further into the Oasis, to Clopper Hill.

~~~~~

Lacuna sits and wonders if she is dreaming.  There is a large metallic-blue clopper sitting on the top of the hill, surrounded by smaller normal cloppers.  It is not this that makes her doubt her senses, though she is curious as to what this creature is.  It is the half-dozen homins from The Soul running around like headless yubos, pursued by extremely irate cloppers.  She recognises Lee and Agan as being amongst  the most enthusiastic of them.  They are all laughing and taking turns to run up the hill, and then irritate as many cloppers as they can before running back to the water’s edge.  Where they then try as kill as many as possible before seeking the safety of the water, and starting the whole process over again.  So that there is constant stream of homins and cloppers running up and down the hill.  She calls out, asking what they are doing.  Lee laughingly explains that they are trying to kill Clopperketh, which she takes is the large blue clopper on top of the hill.  She is not sure that their strategy is in anyway effective, but they are certainly enjoying themselves.  She finds if hard not to be caught up in the communal mirth.

~~~~~

    She sits at the top of the dune at the Kami teleporter in Oflovak’s Oasis and the memories of training here with Catalonia and Rowwena plays across her mind.  Though her obsession with digging would mean that Rowwena’s martial skills would soon outstrip her own.  It is quiet here now, with only a few homins digging.  But she remembers that just after she arrived from Silan that this oasis was crowded with packers and homins.  A hive of activity, with homins feverishly digging or training their martial prowess on cloppers.  It was on these the very dunes that her journey to understand the relationship between weather and material extraction began.  
    In the last few months before mastering her desert dig she would travel down to the Flaming Forest from the teleporter here. It was at the border between the oasis and forest that she met Fyrosfreddy for the first time.  She wonders still at the truth behind the banter between Freddy and Binarabi.  Were they really once married, and what is the truth behind Binarabi’s formidable aunties? Later, she would come close to joining the Fluffy Bunnies, but then she lost track of the time in the Roots, and when she came back she had changed.  She was harder, more cynical.  Atys had moved on and so had she.
    After she gained her desert master, she spent months exploring Scorched Corridor to map all the excellent foraging sites.  She remembers the frustration and eventual triumph of trying to dig excellent grade Zun amber.  Later she would proudly show Heta around, pointing out all the dig spots and explaining what season and time they could be extracted.
    Finally, she visited Aen, the Desert Blade, who patiently reminds Lacuna that Melkiar is long dead, and Akilia Ash Storm now rules.  Promise me, Lacuna, that you will remember this, and, please, no spreading tales about lumpers again!  You need to be taken seriously!  The news you carry has many potential ramifications for the clans and you cannot afford to alienate Akilia, nor to be laughed out of camp.  Lacuna tries to make this sink in, but her head hurts, focussing on one thing is hard for her.   The sadness takes her and she misses her sisters.  She had been sure the Black Varinx still lived.  Aen has not seen her sisters, nor has she had word of them for years.  She did see Marikka a few years back when she brought warning of another raid by Chanchey.  Chanchey is a thorn in the side of the marauders, leading rampaging bands of rangers, Kami and Karavan cultists, and unaligned misfits against the marauder leaders in the New Lands.  Something needs to done about this avatar of evil.  They discuss a possible solution, a series of assassinations against the high officers of the Free Soul, culminating in making Chanchey a living example of what happens to those who defy the clans - a testament to their power writ large on his body.  By the time they finish their discussion Melkiar lives again in Lacuna’s mind.  She has made up her mind to leave on the morning.


[OOC: In the interest of fairness, a link to the blatant lies that is Marceline’s side of the story to entry 5]


Link:  My side of the story

[OOC The true story of Bones’s Big Night Out]

 

 

She sits a her campfire lost in time.  She passes her cup from hand to hand and remembers another campfire, months, years ago? The memory fills her mind…

 

A spark from her fire brings her back to the present.  She realises that she never told Bones that she was leaving.  She has never understood why Bones agreed to become, basically the guild dogsbody.  He is trusting and loyal: she almost feels bad about all the times she has blamed him for all her thefts, almost.  If there was any job that needed doing that was dirty, demeaning, dangerous, hard work or just plain nasty, they made Bones do it…

 

~~~~~~

 

Fake date with a Lost Girl Scam

 

'You are going to have to take it out again, Lac, his ass is just too…’

‘Does it make my bum look fat?  I’m not wearing it if it does!’ Bones blurt out, as he stood in guild house common room, dressed in one of Marichia’s Zorai dresses.

‘I still don’t see why is has to one of my dresses!’

‘You the tallest, hun.’ Marikka replied.  Covering her mouth and trying not to laugh at an outraged Bones, who as trying to look over his shoulder to check out his behind.

‘You two are replacing this one from the profits we make from this.’

‘I said we would.  Now we just need something to… ummmm… emphasise his assets with.’

‘We can pad him out with Stinkan moss.  It’s not like we are doing anything else with it.  I can easily sew that into the vest to give a bit more oooompphh up top.  That should do the trick.’ Lacuna mumbled through a mouth full of pins, as she let down the hem of the skirt by a few inches.

‘How much are we going to start the bidding at?’ Marichia asked.

They had came up the with idea of an auction for a date with a Lost Girl.  Of course, there was no way that any of them were actually going to go on a date with one of the farting apes that infested the camp.  That left Bones.

‘I think we should start at 1000 dappers and see how it goes.’ said Marikka. ‘And Lacuna, remember to distract Sad, there’s no way that Bones will fool her, and I don’t trust her conscience not to nag her and to let slip that it is not a new guildie that we’re offering for auction.’

‘I look ridiculous!’ Bones whined, and looked on the verge of outright rebellion.

‘Nonsense, the blue of the dress really brings out your eyes,’ Mrikka chipped in, rolling her eyes at Lacuna.

‘Now remember, if it is Alees that wins, you are home and dry.  Just bat your lashes every now and then and giggle a lot.  He’s too much of a gentlehomin to try anything.  If it’s Lee, just ply him with drink until he passes out, then wake him at the end of the night and tell him he was magnificent.  If it’s Carl, just punch him in the nads if he tries anything and if you threaten to kill him every five minutes and he’ll never notice that you’re are not a real Lost Girl.  Now if it’s Revvy… well if it’s Revvy, lie back and think of your imaginary deity of choice.  And remember, for goodness sake, no farting, or burping the alphabet, or picking your nose and eating it,’ Marichia lectured Bones.

‘And, most importantly, remember while you are keeping the winner occupied we will be robbing their apartment blind.  So don’t blow your cover!’ Marrika emphasised each of her points by jabbing Bones in the middle of his forehead with her index finger.  ‘If this does. Not. Go. As. Planned. You. Will. Be. Very. Sorry!’

 

~~~~~~

 

In the morning she will enter Kitins’ Lair and search for the elusive entrance to the Roots that Aen suggested may provide the quickest route to the Old Lands.  She sits huddled at her fire in the ranger camp in Almati Wood, apart from the others physically and socially; they are not her sisters nor her comrades.  She is here not for protection, nor company, but news.  What she hears dismays her: the clans may take up spears against each other.  The ranger camp is buzzing with the news of a declared attack against Woodburn Stronghold by Le Clan de la Sève Noire, and will this pit clan against clan.  She hopes the clans aligned with the pseudo Rangers, if they cannot take up arms to help Sève Noire, will remain apart. She fears what this means for the future of clans.  She has lost her sisters, that is enough.  Though she is tempted to turn back with this news, it is more vital than ever that she speak with Melkiar. 

[OOC The only thing harmed in the making of this episode, was Bones's dignity and Marichia's dress.  We leave it up to the reader to decide which is the greater tragedy.]

[OOC Careful what you wish for: the true story of how Revvy got his curry.]

Aen had advised her that if she could not find a shortcut to the Old Lands from Kitins’ Lair, the shortest route would be from Silan.  Kitins’ Lair had been a dead-end, so here she was, back where her journey has started.  She can still remember no further back than her regaining consciousness just south of the Karavan Embassy, the victim of an obvious assault.  But by whom and for what reason, she has no idea.

Lacuna wanders around the ranger camp in Silan.  She is shocked by how quiet it is.  When she as last here the camp was full of newly arrived refugees recuperating and learning the basics of the skills they would need when the moved on to their new lives in the New Lands.  It was a vibrant if fluid community.  She, herself, had stayed far longer than she really needed to - apprehension of what lay ahead stalling her decision to leave for the mainland.  She smiles as she remembers her frustration of trying to find zun amber so she could impress Milles Dodoine with her burgeoning foraging skills.  Ironic that the skill that was her bane here would become her obsession.  She has decided to stay a few days and rest before setting off to find Melkiar.  If she is honest, trepidation makes her delay her departure as much as it did her younger self in travelling the opposite direction.  If Lacuna was more given to introspection she might ponder on the symmetry of her journey.  Broken, lost and alone she arrived from the Old Lands - lost, alone and no less broken she prepares to venture back. 

As she wanders through the camp her mind wanders in time …  

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lacuna is not sure how she ended up finally agreeing to cook Revvy a curry, but she is not happy about it.  Being nice to a male was… well… just not her.  Being brutally violent, in a constructive manner, yes.* But nice… it was just… He must have tricked me.  ’Hmmmmm, the swine must have gotten me drunk.  That must be it.  The git!  Imagine taking advantage of a poor, innocent homine!’  Lacuna paced up and down ranting.  

Sad and Bazett looked on perplexed as Lacuna carried out a rather loud conversation with herself.  They rolled rolled their eyes behind Lacuna’s back and avoided making any comment about how Lacuna’s ability to get blind drunk on half a glass of beer was as legendary, as her suggestibility while drunk, not to mention, her complete and utter refusal to accept any responsibility for her actions, whatsoever.  It was always someone else’s fault.  Reality and Lacuna are very, very distant neighbours.  Revvy was just the latest in a long line of homins who bore the brunt of Lacuna’s obsessive paranoia.

Lacuna realised that she was left with a tricky dilemma - cook it well and satisfy her pride, as she was rather conceited about her cooking skills, or poison the evil, cheating, little scumbag.  Sadly Lacuna knew she did not possess Binarabi’s skills at martial cookery [Her Red Right Hand].  Nevertheless, she could always experiment and make Bones test them out.  And it was a curry; the spices could hide the taste of a wide range of inventive ingredients… at the very least she should be able give the swine explosive diarrhoea.

~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

As the memory retreats she wonders if Revvy ever worked out the secret ingredient in his curry was the putrefying Yelkoo fat and jugula secretion that she used to tan Mekoo skins.  She knows Mithian saw her adding this final touch to the cook pot, but for some reason he didn’t tell his lazy guild mate.  He simply sat with a small, secretive smile on his face as he watched Revvy greedily shovel the curry into his mouth. 

She has failed to find her sisters.  The sadness is growing in her.  At times, she wonders if they were real, or just a figment of her imagination, broken memories.  The song is calling her still, but she has a task to complete first…

 

*Lacuna is a firm believer in the Mindless Violence School of Learning: give a homin a fish - feed him for a day; beat a homin senseless and next time he will get his own fish. 

[OOC The true and honest history of Lacuna’s adventures in Atys Nullius]

 

The sadness swells within her; she feels like she is unravelling, coming apart.   She raises her cup to her mouth, hesitates… 

She has been travelling for a few weeks, following the rough map that Aen gave her.  She crouches  in the forest undergrowth and watches what appears to be a Kipekin.  It is not the first apex creature she has seen since setting out from Silan.  Travelling through virgin forest has not been easy.  There are no roads or pathways to follow, only animal trails.  It was from following one that she had stumbled onto the frippos.  She did not know boss frippo existed and her curiosity of it caused her to approach too closely.  She had to flee from it and the unusually aggressive guards; all the while experiencing the disconcerting feeling of having her sap reserves drained.  She needs to be more careful on this journey; she does not want to wake up back in Silan all because she was careless.  She will have to move round this spawn, but for now she is lost in thought.  Memories of happier days come to mind…  

The thrill of the hunt: the successes and the failures.  She remembers being shouted at for training her hand to hand skills while tanking Kinkoo.  The madness of killing Madakoo inside Deadtree Hole.  Being within moments of killing Kizokoo with Marichia, Babel and Altyra, and then all hell breaking loose as every herbivore in the Cattle Room became enraged.  The chaos caused by running through the Cavern Cranks camp with Mederi and Nuno, then escaping into the Jubla forest south of the Cursed Cavern, with the bandits, Rakoo and its guards in hot pursuit - all the while trying to find a moment of calm to regroup and engage Rakoo.  

She thinks of Nuno, who taught her so much about hunting and crafting.  She remembers running around Deadtree Stronghold with Spettra, Nuno and the twins, firing spells at an enraged Madakoo, and wishing Nuno would put on some clothing.  His obsession with hunting Gubakoo.  She smiles at the thought of him dancing in front of Kinkoo, waving his staff.  The secrets he taught her and Marichia about Kizokoo.  Still no matter how much she admired Nuno’s skills as a hunter, there were others…   

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

She stands at Furtive Waters, awestruck, watching Maja and Triplex battle Kipekoo.  She knew you could mage-tank the likes of Aranakin.  She, herself, had mage-tanked Yelkoo with Spettra and Nuno, but this… this was something else.  Not only were they killing Kipekoo, they were doing it in one of the most challenging boss spawn locations in Prime Roots.  Lacuna focussed all her attention on Maja.  She must be using Triplex simply as bait, a meat-shield.   She was so focussed on watching Maja, trying to work out the secret of their success that she never realised that Mederi was talking to her, until she feels a sharp pain of a small piece of bark striking her on the ear. 

‘Hmmmmmm what?’

‘I said they are impressive.  Have you heard anything I was saying?’

‘Yes.  Yes… you were talking about declaring for Elias Tryton…’ and her attention drifts back to Maja.   

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As she comes back to herself with the thought of Tryton and his followers.  She has never trusted the disciples of Tryton, and considers them to be secretive meddlers, hiding in the shadows.  She remembers that GoS renounced the Kami and relocated to Fairhaven, where they declared themselves Trytonists.  Then they vanished without a word.  She remembers how not long after making a militant declaration for Tryton, Mederi, too, disappeared without a trace.   Is there a sinister secret here?

She thinks of others who who vanished, suddenly, without a word.  Joabu screaming a warning at her and Spettra to get out of the way as she ran towards the Hall of the Mountain Bane Stronghold, with what appeared to be half the kinchers in the Forbidden Depths in close pursuit.  She remembers laughing so hard that she nearly threw up at the sight of Beeficus and his entourage being brutally slaughtered by Rugukin’s guards, after the idiots ran straight through the spawn.  And Aikoon, who she and Spettra often trained with in the Void.  And how they they tried to convince her that all males must die.  Bambamseven, she feels real surprise that she misses a homin almost as much as her sisters.  Soynuggets, who she and Marichia would threaten into cooking for them.   Divinesoul, without doubt, the ugliest Matis male whoever lived.  Mely, who she had hoped would join them in Lost Girls.  All of them, here one day and gone the next.

Thoughts of the vanished focuses her attention again on memories of Maja and Triplex.  Over the months her awe of the skill of the two homins grew.  She would see them kill creatures that she just did not think was possible for two homins to accomplish.  It would lead to her own desire to imitate them in some small way.  She remembers how she and Babel spent months practising on the smaller apex creatures, like Ocyketh, Shakan and Torkan.  The triumph she felt the first time they killed Yelkoo.  How they sharpened their skills on the plant and herbivore bosses first; Psykokoo and Kipeeketh and others would fall to them.  The long hours they spent at night tweaking spells and discussing equipment and strategy.  The failures against Mekoo and Kibakoo, before finally, after a brutal battle, they triumphed against Rakoo.  How she thought after defeating Goakan that they were, finally, ready for Kipekoo, and how pride comes before the fall…

 

She realises that it is time to move on.  She has spent too long here lost in the past.  

 

[OOC Coming soon the totally non-libellous account of Carl’s first date. ]

[OOC A true and honest tale told by an unreliable narrator, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing]

Lacuna sits by her fire.  She has travelled far, but still has much farther to go.  Forest is starting to give way to lake-lands.  She sits and contemplates her sword.  The intricacies of crafting fascinates her: the trade-off between the different attributes of the crafted object.  She had been so happy when she worked out how to slightly improve upon the recipe that Bones gave her - a small change in the grip and it became just that little bit easier to wield.  She had been lucky with this sword, it only took four attempts before one boosted.  But rubbarn is fickle.  The skill of the crafter has no impact on an attempt to boost an item.  Though many have looked, there is no rhyme or reason to it…

~~~~~~~~~~~~

‘What on Atys is Lacuna doing? It sounds like a herd of rampaging shalahs being slaughtered,’ cried Marikka.  She noticed an unconscious Bones’s lying prostrate on the floor with broken pieces of a pike lying next to him.  ‘And what happened to him?’

Marichia suppressed a laugh, well you know how Lacuna has been spending the last few months farming Zinch and Poncha?  Well, apparently, she managed to get enough materials to make a hundred pikes.’

‘A hundred!’

‘Well she was hoping for a few boosts.  Unfortunately, it took eighty-one attempts before she got one success, and only two in total.  Bones made the mistake of commenting on how it wasn’t as unlucky as her Vedice pike; you know, the one she spent days balancing the materials for just to have it both boost and degrade.  And now she’s smashing up her workshop, and inventing new curse words by the sounds of it.  Of course, it will get much worse if the one she broke over Bones’s head was one of the boosted ones,’ Marichia laughed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lacuna remembers the long years of drudgery digging practice materials so she could improve her crafting skills. She mastered light armour first, mainly to try and preempt Binarabi from crafting Matis balloon pants for males.  She shudders as she remembers Eikichi proudly strutting around in them. She has always believed in giving males a choice in what light armour they can wear: Fyros or Tryker caster skirt, in black or white, or get shouted at until they gave in to her point-of-view.  But it was not until she mastered amplifier craft that she started to become obsessed with trying to master the nuances of how different materials combined in crafting.   

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lacuna sat staring at the partially finished amp in her lap, surrounded by pieces of bark, fibre, amber and buds.  She knew that she could tweak this design so that if boosted it would be just that little bit more elementally powerful than the one she knew.  She had managed to solve this problem, but she had not written the revision in her recipe book, and for the life of her she could not remember it.  As he pondered the problem, she knew that if she changed the buds to Shooketh ones, the amps capabilities stayed the same, but switch them with supreme Zun and the amp was effectively ruined.  And even if she reworked the grip and shaft, it was nowhere near as powerful. Maybe it wasn’t the focus that as the problem but the shaft…

‘Lacuna are you paying attention,’ Marichia grumbled.  ‘Just leave the amp alone and listen, this is important!’

‘Yes, yes. You want to rob Carl.  I just can’t see why don’t we just stick Bones in a dress again?’

‘That won’t work after he knocked out Lee for kissing him and trying to grab a feel.  Luckily Lee is embarrassed enough with everyone knowing he got… how shall I put it?… amorous with Bones that he won’t add to it by letting on that we used the auction a decoy to rob him of all his Dolak skins.  However, now there is no way that Carl will believe that Bones in a dress is you.’

‘Why can’t Marikka or you do it!’

‘Sorry, but you’re the one he’s infatuated with,’ smirked Marikka.

‘Uffffffff.  It’s not fair!!!’

‘Look you only need to distract him long enough for me and Marikka to break into his apartment and steal all his Kirokya mandibles.’

‘But he is so annoying! He keeps asking me if I want a Rez. I am not sure what that is, but I think it’s some weird Matis sex thingy.  And now he’s started following me around waving a piece of paper, that he claims is a note signed by you that I am not allowed to kill him!’  Lacuna glared suspiciously at Marichia.

‘Oh don’t listen to him,’ said Marichia, quickly changing the subject, just invite him on a picnic, or whatever, and keep him out of the way for a few hours.’  Marichia hoped that Lacuna wouldn’t find out she had signed that note in exchange for Carl’s supply of maga.

 

After sulking (or as Marichia put it, a full blown tantrum) had not changed her sisters’ minds, Lacuna invited Carl to meet her at the Marauder teleport in the Grove of Confusion under the pretence of needing his help to kill Vispa.

‘If you tank, I promise that I’ll heal you.’

‘You said that last week and you never!’

She tries not to smirk at the thought of Carl believing her promises to heal him as he bravely charged back into the pursuing Kitin Patrol, while she and Marichia ran all the faster in opposite direction. ‘I am sorry about that, but we… ummmmmm… we got scared, and you know we are just poor, defenceless homines, and that’s why we ran away!  Anyway, after you help kill Vispa for me we can go for a picnic.’  Lacuna tried to smile seductively but it just looked like she had indigestion.

As sat daintily eating her spicy yubo kebab, Lacuna wished that males could die a little more quietly, Carl’s screams were ruining her picnic.  He was so inconsiderate at times.  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Her certification as a master amp crafter led to the ambition to become a craft master in all melee weapons. She spent years digging at Loria Ponds working towards this goal.  Then once she had finally mastered them all, the realisation of the far harder apprenticeship of learning what each weapon was capable of still lay ahead of her - if she was to become a true craft master.  She became fascinated with what materials suited different weapons and what their limits were.  How to balance materials to boost the attributes one desired.  How to make dodging or parrying an opponent’s attacks easier, or to make the weapon strike truer.

Though she became a master crafter in shields and bucklers, she was not able to motivate herself to take on a new challenge.  She attempted a few times to start working towards becoming a jeweller.  And though the secrets of jewellery craft intrigued her, the memory of how mastering it nearly broke Marichia’s sanity gave her pause for thought, and the realisation of the drudgery of digging a proverbial mountains of amber and seeds always ended her efforts after a few days.  

As she stares at her fire, she acknowledges that, no matter how much she has learned, there is still so much more she does not know.  Then it came to her, it was not the shaft or the focus that as the problem, it was the grip: all she needed to do was swap some excellent shu for choice.  If she ever returns home she is going to have to write this down.* 

 

*OOC: Remember to back up your files, kids, or you too could spend over a year trying to recreate your recipes :P

[OOC Only the facts were changed to spare the blushes of certain homins]

[OOC A brief interlude: the truth is out there - part one]

 

She sits by her campfire, lost in sadness and stares into her cup - memories of her journey to this place overtake her…

 

Lacuna stares at the creature in the water and is lost for words.  She has heard rumours of the Baldusa, Prakker and the Sagass that are rumoured to live in the waters of the Old Lands, but whether this creature is one of them she is at a loss to say.  It seems too small to be one of these fabled creatures, being somewhat smaller than a full grown Tryker.  With a whip of what is presumably its tail the creature vanishes into the deeper water of the lake.  

Lacuna fills her canteen and returns to her fire. She sat and waited for the Suckling Messab to finish roasting.  She guesses that she must now be in what was once Trykoth.  There is the indications of ruins far to the east of her camp, but her journey will not take her near them.   Whether this is fabled Jeniah or Breneth, or some small settlement, she does not know.  As she waits she idly picks at the node of eyota wood she had unearthed to build her fire.  She can tell that there is pha amber near here too…

She wonders what Alexarwe did with all the supreme pha that she dug for her.  That she was trying to boost amps seems the most likely explanation, but Lacuna has an aversion to this easy way of making heal amps - the loss of elemental power annoys her.  There is still the nagging suspicion that the amber may have been for something else, and not knowing irritates her, like itch one cannot scratch.  Though she made millions dappers in trading pha with Alex, more than she has been able to spend, she has the nagging doubt as to who got the best of their arrangement.  Though Alex is Kami, she is one of the handful of Ma-Duck followers that Lacuna does not want to set fire to as a general principle.  But she is Matis, and one can never trust a MATIS! 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lacuna sits staring at the flames of Aleeskandaro’s camp fire.  Alees is not sure if she is talking to him or some unseen interlocutor.

‘Have you ever wondered what really happened to the Momo?’

‘Everyone knows, the Matis wiped them out, Lac. There is no conspiracy.’

‘That is a lie!  Just look at the Cutes, Gibbaï and Frahar, they share one feature - they are all ugly, monstrosities who are antagonistic to all homins.  If the Matis are not really the Momo how to do you explain how ugly they are.  Pasty faced freaks, the lot of them!’

Alees coughed and nearly choked on his beer.  ’So, let’s get this straight, you think the Matis are really the Momo!  You think I am a Momo!’ 

Not taking her eyes of the fire, Lacuna retorted: ‘I don’t think, I know!  It’s so obvious!  The Matis were peaceful homins who lived in harmony with Atys and the Momo consumed with jealousy for what the Matis had built rose up and slaughtered them and took their place!  The truth stares us in the face everyday - the Matis are the Momo!  Just look at the way they run, like they have a stick up their bum - walking upright does not come naturally to them.’

‘How much have you had to drink, Lac?’  Alees ‘accidentally’ stretched out a leg and knocked over Lacuna’s beer.

‘I’m not drunk!  Look, if the Matis are not really the Momo, how else do you explain Divinesoul!’  

~~~~~~~~~~~~

For some reason, that Lacuna has never been able to understand, homins refuse to believe her explanations of what is really happening on Atys.  Her sisters never believed her that there was a guild house ghost who kept stealing all the dappers from the lockbox.  To be fair that was just her with a sheet over her head, but still they could have trusted her.  And she only had to make up that story after they stopped believing her that Bones was the thief.  This lack of trust really hurts.  

But I am not lying about the lumpers.

[OOC to be continued… ]