Hex Marks the Spot - IC Thread

[Roania]

OOC Thread is Here: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=305556


The fog was so thick you could cut it with a knife. It had rolled in overnight, causing no end of dismay in the small town, which survived on fishing. The fleet was still out there, in the grey clouds, and men and women alike feared for them. Not that it mattered to the guests at Ahnqow's only inn. Their concern wasn't with the sea, but inland, through the swamps and jungle, following a yellowed map that lay on the table now. "You see," said the Marquis, pointing along the lines. "In ages past, this old town was much larger. A haunt of pirates and worse thugs. And it was here that the great pirate had his headquarters. Not two hundred yards from where we're standing now, in fact."

They had already, of course, seen the broken down shell of Nayhar's home, left exposed to the elements after the victorious war fleet had slighted it. A cursory examination had determined its whereabouts on the map. "Now, tomorrow morning, we'll go into the swamp." The Marquis was short, even by Roanian standards. Short and round. This, in a society where many of the wealthy prided themselves on physical fitness, said a lot. It also meant that he wasn't going to be an asset. Still, it was his expedition.

[The SLAGLands]

Bella rolls her head on her shoulders and cracks it. Maps, she thought. They never said I'd be expected to know maps.

It was, of course, Hot Tag Comics that had coaxed Tamara Domingo into following the Marquis's requests. The reasons were the usual ones. Attendance was down at the arena shows. Comics sales hadn't recovered to pre-war levels. She'd wanted to say something about "giving it time" or "her first time under the hood" or "we just finished a goddamned civil war you stained-shorts nerd." But she couldn't argue that she'd gotten lucky. She was only the fourth woman to portray Bella Blood'nguts--and the first one after the war. The other Bellas had done it all, from battling vampires on the silver screen to wrestling in front of sold-out crowds at Kelder's Frog Palace to staring down the diabolical Dr. D'Abolyque in the pages of Blood'nguts: The SLAGLands' Mightiest Brawler!!! It was an important legacy. And damn it, she was supposed to be a role model for young girls.

But actually hunting treasure? Traveling halfway around the world, putting on her gear, and helping this Marquis character find mysterious treasure? That was something new. That was something unprecedented.

The previous Bellas had only acted out these kinds of stories. Actually living through one? In the ring, she could live this myth. But she was still just a girl from Bauxinia who was taller and stronger than the other girls.

"You're a trained fighter," the exec from Hot Tag had said. "They'll take care of you, and you can take care of yourself if they don't. And of course, the share of the treasure is yours."

And so it came to be that a muscular woman of well over six feet tall stood leering over a map, her massive arms folded across her chest like knotted tree limbs. Her square jaw wore a slight scowl that jutted out from a black and gold mask that rose above her forehead in a flame-like pattern. She didn't even provide a real name. For the Marquis--and for everyone who asked--she was Bella Blood'nguts, same as she had ever been for the past sixty years. Such was the legend of the mask.

"Shouldn't be a problem," Bella said, puffing out her chin for effect--a trick she'd learned working promos all over the country. "I ain't seen a thug yet that can't be sorted out with an elbow to the jaw, hear me?"

But under the mask, Tamara Domingo shivered a little bit. There was real danger afoot. If she survived it, she could be the greatest Bella Blood'nguts of all time. If not...

[Nazis in Space]

Heinrich Klaussen looked disdainfully down at the pathetic creature that was the reason for his presence in this godforsaken place - well, one of the causes, anyway. The other was supposedly related to repeated cases of what was officially called insubordination and the Gestapo being after his arse -, but refrained from commenting on it.

That creature was, after all, his paycheck.

Disdainful looks were par for the course for Heinrich, who was, after all, a certified Nazi - which, somewhat counterintuitively, didn't say a whole lot about his biological classification. As it turned out, spending a few generations fleeing from justice and with very, very little contact with other civilisations tended to... Muddle some things, the concept of National Socialism being one of them. As a consequence, Heinrich happened to belong to a species of happily germanified lizardmen with an arguably attractive set of scales under his worn and patchy leather clothes.

He turned his gaze away from the Marquis and, listening somewhat absently to the gigantic masked woman's boast - not that he disbelieved her. With a body like hers, her elbows had to hurt -, looked over the map with his left eye, the hole that'd once contained his right one being covered by an eyepatch adorned with the rune gyfu.

"Haf ze swamps been searched in the past? Haz anything been found?"

[Roania]

"Ah, the locals believe there to be some sort of 'curse' on the treasure. So they have been content to live in their huts, when a fortune could be theirs." The Marquis sniffed. "We will see what there is to see about that. I believe there was an expedition fifty years ago by a claimed descendant of the captain, but finding information in the archives about them is such... manual work. No, sir, that treasure is still out there. If it had been found, I'd know it after a cursory look." The Marquis tapped the map with his finger. "Before that? Well, this map comes from a hundred or so years ago. Was passed down by descendants of Nayhar's crew. So far, it's held up nicely."

The map certainly could have been that old. It was sketched out on vellum, with High Roanian characters decorating it. They were, according to the Marquis, at the beginning of the trail.

[New Naggoroth]

"A curse?" Gwynn finally spoke up in her thin, lilting voice, having until then been standing silently with the others around the table and listening to the Marquis. "Nonsense. It's all just peasant superstition. If there was something tangible, it wouldn't leave victims to tell of it..."

Dressed in formless grey robes and leaning on the staff that was taller then she was, Gwynn Hydel didn't exactly cut an imposing figure. A few strands of white hair escaped from the beneath her otherwise concealing hood, likely causing the casual observer to think her some ancient crone. Which was rather far from the truth, just as she liked it. Crones seldom drew attention from drunken and amorous sailors, like the ones filling this tavern.

While the prospect of slogging through the jungle to likely find nothing was not all that appealing, Gwynn was expected, as a new initiate to the Sisterhood, to go out into the world and test herself. So she had jumped at the first opportunity and had made her services available to the foolish Marquis, evening waving her usual fee in exchange for a share of this likely mythical treasure.

Of course, the Marquis, being a clearly serious individual, had doubted the prowess of anybody named Caramel. Gwynn hadn't, in truth, picked the name. For various reasons, new Sisters were given short, simple alternate monikers to use as a means of protecting themselves. Gwynn's closest friends in the training house, for example, were known simply as Minx and Ruby. She had hated the name ever since her instructor had given it to her on her first day, but it had stuck and years later she still stubbornly used it.

"I would know, after all. That's why you brought me aboard. Because I know such things," she added smugly, though her common heavily accented and obviously not her first language. "Now, if nothing else, have you made us rooms for the night?"

[The SLAGLands]

Bella looks down at Bella, just a hint of a smirk on her face. "The little one's right, y'know," she says to the Marquis. "If a curse is behind it all, then it ain't nothin' we can't tackle. 'specially if the price is right."

She turns to the Marquis, cracking her neck again. "Y'expect we leave in the mornin' then? Assumin' ya know the way an' the weather's nice... well, nice as it could be, anyway." She regards the fetid swamp with a shake of her head. Swamps... why'd it have to be swamps?

OOC: kick in the butt to those of you who haven't posted yet.

[The Boundless Legion]

"Curses tend to be booby traps and other tricks of the trade," utters an olive-skinned woman with a black bouffant, her sound boots emitting a clack each time they hit the floor. The name "Aurelok" was woven into the left breast of her green jacket, and her tunic bore a large letter "B" inside a white circle, framed by a pair of wings.

"Legend and hearsay is legend and hearsay until I say otherwise," adds Captain Nyima as she rested her hand on the hilt of her saber. "Apologies for my lateness. Tidying some things up on the Impetus."