City of IF

[chiacutie]

I chose to send Lawrence and I to the boats because t would be the most fun to write/read.

Not because it has my name in it, because of the.. situation? You know what Im trying to say?

[LordoftheNight]

Just wondering - is the '&q' at the end of the title deliberate?

[chiacutie]

i was kinda thinking that as well.

[Lebrenth]

lordofthenight wrote: Just wondering - is the '&q' at the end of the title deliberate?

Nope, it's some sort of glitch with the second """. I can't get rid of it for some reason. But then I thought it might get extra attention so I stopped worrying about it.

[chiacutie]

hey when can we expect a new chappy? BTW I pmd you money for my sister's entry just so she can vote cuz she kept whining about it

[Lebrenth]

chiacutie wrote: hey when can we expect a new chappy? BTW I pmd you money for my sister's entry just so she can vote cuz she kept whining about it

Excellent! Who is she sponsoring? Your character perhaps? I'll start the next chapter today and but probably won't be done until tomorrow.

I'm so glad I finally have an extra participant to help me try out my experiment. Thanks Blue Duck! Now just pick a character to sponsor and whoever you pick will get half of your entry fee as a bonus! Also, feel free to comment and vote whenever you like now that you're in.

Groovy

[chiacutie]

haha she picks me

after all, im paying her way in.

[Lebrenth]

chiacutie wrote: haha she picks me

after all, im paying her way in.

Well then you can consider it a "half off" sale. 35 Fables going back to you!

[chiacutie]

*does a little jig*

oh dunno if i said this but nice chaappy :D the first chapter was still my fave tho

[Lebrenth]

Episode 4, Freebooter Ambush


“We need to strike now,” Ross imposes. Thomas rubs his abrasive chin before replying,

“We should, before they do the same to us.”

“I know where they are,” Ethan says.

“I want to help!” Chia says brightly. “Larry and I could go spy on them,” she continues, volunteering the least intimidating treasure hunter with her, “maybe trick them into an ambush or something.”

“We should snipe them. I have a pistol,” Ross says.

“If you’re going to snipe them, you’ll need a musket at least,” Thomas says directly, knowing the accuracy of simple pistols very well.

“I have a crossbow,” Chia says. “You can borrow it if you promise not to shoot me while I’m talking to them.”

“My pistol will work,” Ross says coldly.

“There’s only five of them,” Ethan says with narrowed black hole eyes. “We could throw a net over them and finish them all before they could even draw their weapons. We could keep the leader alive for information.”

“Can we please just talk to them first?” Chia asks in frustration. The lack of faith in her ability to beguile affronts her. Seeing her eyes fire up is enough to convince the hunters to let her have a chance to talk, but they furtively determine that there will be a massacre anyway.

The rocs are crying when the crew leaves the mansion. Everyone except Jenn, Juan, and Father Charles go. Jenn keeps working at the secret door and it was determined that it would be best if Father Charles didn’t know about the ambush. The treasure hunters tell him to stay with Jenn and keep her safe while they ‘look around a little more’. He doesn’t seem to notice how they carry their weapons, like tools of destruction to be used, not merely as precautions to carry.

Ethan has no challenge returning to the freebooters’ camp. His instincts in direction and distance have served him well before, and he doesn’t need to be in a forest to use them. A short plume smoke rises ahead, dyed orange by firelight, which spreads its color to the surrounding buildings with the stretched shadows of the freebooters making a puppet show on the walls. Ethan takes them to back street and peers around the corner of a small rough stone house. The others do the same in turn. Thomas and Jeremy immediately climb onto the flat roof of the house and Thomas sets his sights for the distance. Ethan, Ross, and Jim get much closer, but isolated from each other and everyone else. Aspi, still the quietest of the treasure hunters, doesn’t speak to or even nod at anyone. She gets in close enough to smell the cooking fish and see the beads of sweat on the cook’s forehead. She never considered it a talent to simply keep quiet and hidden, but she was talented anyway. Most of the treasure hunters already forgot she was even with them and have no idea where she went.

“All right, don’t screw this up,” Chia says to Lawrence, handing him her pack and patting her hair. “How do I look?”

“Like a flock of doves flying through a cloud,” he says pleasantly. She looks at him severely, trying to figure out if he was being nice or sarcastic, but decides he was being nice and smiles.

“Ready? Now don’t say anything. You’re just my servant, ok?”

“What?”

“Just keep quiet.”

Chia strolls like a white sailboat on calm waters while Lawrence plods along behind her like a carriage with lopsided wheels. The freebooters talk loudly and pass a jug around. The world around them doesn’t exist and they’re completely unaware of the plans against them. Chia could nearly touch one of them before they notice her, but the sight is not startling. She’s just a dream come to life, delicate and harmless. The goofy looking man following her is a little off putting, but he hardly looks dangerous.

“Excuse me gentlemen,” she says in smooth unhurried voice, “but could I join you? The fish smells so nice and we’ve been walking a long time.”

Being treated genteelly confuses all them and leaves them awkwardly stuttering their welcome.

“You can sit,” she says to Lawrence, enjoying playing her part a little more than necessary. Lawrence plops down on a stone next to a large man.

“Hi there,” Lawrence says quietly, the man nods back. The group seems pleased that he’s just a servant. Suddenly realizing a way to accommodate Chia, they slide apart and give her a place to sit. She touches their shoulders and smiles as she sits. It goes quiet, though Chia is at ease. The hunters in the darkness tap their fingers against their weapons impatiently. Thomas zeroes in on a target.

“Would you like some fish?” the cook asks, a man with stains all over his vest, who’s already botched his task of keeping the fish from burning.

“Yes thank you,” she says. “Jordan,” she says as a request, holding out her hand and looking at Lawrence.

“Huh?” he says absently.

“Knife,” she says. He gets into her things and finds her knife. He hobbles over and puts it in her hand. She slowly cuts the fish into small pieces and picks them up with her fingers as gracefully as if she were dining with nobles in a banquet hall. The freebooters watch her every move. “The fire is a little low,” she says, though it isn’t really. “Jordan, go get more wood.”

A little pile of wood has already been made, but none of the freebooters would mind if he left.

“It doesn’t look that low,” Lawrence says.

“Just go get some firewood,” she says with a wink. Everyone saw it, but no one understood it, least of all Lawrence. Lawrence walks off, leaving the net with the pack. Chia hmphs as she sees his blunder, but decides it’s no big deal. “So have any of you seen Sylvie?” she asks. They laugh and the break in silence becomes a deluge.

“The cat?”

“Is it your cat, lady? Are you the one with the reward.”

“What did you think she was? A lady like her doesn’t come out here for no reason.”

“I think I saw the cat,” one of them says.

“Sure you did, Donny, and you saw the albino mondey playing with the Heart of Akala at trading house too.”

“I did see it,” Donny says. “It was white, wasn’t it? I seen it lurking around before sunset.”

“Really? Where?”

“It was just over there,” he says, pointing roughly in Thomas’s direction. The hunters notice him pointing in their direction and notice the sour faces everyone puts on after he does it, but most can’t hear what he’s saying.

“Yeah, I think I saw it too,” one of the others says unconvincingly. He pulls out a torch and lights in the fire. “I bet I could find it if I gave it a look.”

“That’s ok,” Chia says, suddenly nervous. The others are scrambling to get their torches.

“I bet I could find it for you,” says yet another, checking his musket out of habit.

“Sit down, you couldn’t find a cat if it was hanging from your nose!” Donny says hostilely, knowing that none of them saw it and that they’re all trying to impress Chia. Chia stands up,

“Don’t worry about it, we’ll--”

A spray of blood flecks on Chia’s face and Donny falls onto the fire with a hole in his head. An arrow sinks into the cook’s chest and another shot hits his arm and burrows through into his side. Before the other three can get their bearings, two more shots and a spear assault them from the darkness. The last of them drops everything and runs. Aspi grabs a torch and her spear and chases after him. Chia stands in shock in a whirlwind of death.

Lawrence pulls out his pistol and tries to find a target when the last freebooter collides with him at full speed. They both go down, but the freebooter is already to weak to get up with a bullet in his belly. The pools of blood around the freebooters tell the story of their end, which is very abrupt.


“Good job,” Ethan says as Donny’s hair and clothes catch fire and cast a terrible smell. “We were supposed to keep this one alive!” he says angrily, pointing at the first speared freebooter. Chia can’t force herself to speak. Ross and Ethan beginning going through the possessions, which is mostly dry food. They have no money on them at all and their only ‘treasure’ is a jug of fermented rice. “Nothing,” Ethan says seethingly. “You ruined everything,” he bores into Chia.

“What do you mean, nothing?” Jim says, going to Chia’s defense. “We have 5 muskets and extra food, and now there won’t be any complaints when we take that sailboat.”

Chia walks away quietly. Anything of value is taken and the rest is left where it lays, including the bodies. They decide to divide everything later and return to the mansion to sleep.

Father Charles has a few urgent questions to ask about what happened, and they continue telling him stories to subdue his pesky morality. Jenn shows everyone her abused lockpicks, bent out of shape and snapped. Not only did she fail to get through, she no longer has a set of lockpicks. The treasure hunters, in general, are too tired to worry about it. They camp in the mansion, though most sleep in different rooms in the fair-sized building. Chia finds candles in her room which she uses to fend off the darkness. She drifts off suddenly, not realizing she left the door open and that something skulked in the hallway.

Laying like she was fairy tale maiden in an enchanted sleep, the creature peered into the room sniffing the air. It licks its fangs and its clawed feet stealthily sneak to Chia’s side. Soon it is breathing over her, smelling the blood still spattered on her face, but she does not stir. It opens its mouth and starts to lick the blood.

Chia awakes screaming and the cat flies backward. The white cat with a silver collar runs from the room before Chia is out of bed. She runs after it, but she’s way too late to even see which way it went. He breathing calms, and eventually, she sleeps again with a knife under her pillow just in case a real monster comes to visit her.


Fortunately not. The crew gathers and looks at the booty, which seems a little lighter than before. Lawrence chews happily on a biscuit as the debate begins on who gets a musket, and where the crew will go next. With so much still to explore, it seems any direction could have possibilities, but what about the leads they already have?

[Kalanna Rai]

Humm now I'm lockpick-less eh? No chance of finding a random replacement.

Anyway I say take the sailboat and go see the spice runner.

[chiacutie]

oh well for one, I think that I or my charactor would probably be a bit traumatized by all that death... If you look at her personality shes a bit like a child. Not stupid, but a bit childish, so she would be easily shaken

What if we went to go find the cat thing and found something much, much, MUCH scarier/more powerful than we ever expected?

And you never know where youll find some spare lockpicks ;)

[D-Lotus]

Well, now that we know the cat is in the mansion, it would be stupid not to search for it. If the search gets complicated, we could split the group- one half to the spice runner and the other keeps searching for the cat.

There were some minor mistakes, but the story was engaging. Here's one mistake:

Quote: She never considered keeping quiet and hidden a talent

You might want to reword that.

[chiacutie]

ah, its okay but it could be better. Not that implortant to change (the sentecne not the chappy lolz)

yes well what if they dont believe i saw it?

[Smudger]

Yep, great chappy Lebrenth, very interesting. Putting the cat in at the end made it pretty obvious what we should do, search for it and give it to the old lady once we've got it. And if you haven't noticed your winning in SGotM, 1 ahead of China's Lords & Ladies. Hope you win ;) .

[Lebrenth]

D-Lotus wrote: Well, now that we know the cat is in the mansion, it would be stupid not to search for it. If the search gets complicated, we could split the group- one half to the spice runner and the other keeps searching for the cat.

There were some minor mistakes, but the story was engaging. Here's one mistake:

Quote: She never considered keeping quiet and hidden a talent

You might want to reword that.

I know that sentence... I did have to re-word it a bit, but I think you're right. It's too ambiguous. Thank you very much, D-Lotus. Very, very, very much.

;)

Hurray for SGotM! A forum would make this a lot easier to run....

[D-Lotus]

Quote: Thank you very much, D-Lotus. Very, very, very much.

Well, the sentence stuck out like a thorn, so I felt I had to point it out- but I didn't think you'd be so grateful.

Are you on something? ;)

[Chinaren]

Ha! Good chapter Lebs. ~Polishes rifle~ A suitable amount of needless voilence, and we are allready starting to bag the booty.

I would suggest we slit Father Charles' throat, or possibly Chia's, :D and wait until the cat is lured by the blood again. Set a trap for it.

Mwahahahahaha! :lol:

[LordoftheNight]

Ooo, I like that plan. Can we? Please?

[Lebrenth]

As long as there is a majority vote, there is nothing in the rules against murder. It's on the poll! However, consider that if you start killing treasure hunters, it might be your own life that gets cut short next.

Quote: If the search gets complicated, we could split the group- one half to the spice runner and the other keeps searching for the cat.

I need to cut you off there. I don't mind spreading out, but for the sake of keeping the story manageable, I would really rather not have you split up to that extent. I could do it, of course, but I would need twice as much story and twice as many polls.... The polls being the main problem.


I'm putting up the new poll now!

[Smudger]

Can't we just go get a fish or something and leave it for the cat to get while we wait? Killing someone is rather extreme.

[D-Lotus]

Whoops! I must be losing my eyesight, or be a bit too drowsy. I accidentally pinched on the first option instead of the second, and didn't notice until the vote was effectuated.

[chiacutie]

chinaren wrote: Ha! Good chapter Lebs. ~Polishes rifle~ A suitable amount of needless voilence, and we are allready starting to bag the booty.

I would suggest we slit Father Charles' throat, or possibly Chia's, :D and wait until the cat is lured by the blood again. Set a trap for it.

Mwahahahahaha! :lol:

:( why me? I couldve sworn I bought you something. And Im reading TOD. So be nice!


lordofthemeanypants! wrote: Ooo, I like that plan. Can we? Please?

Now, what did I do to you?

[LordoftheNight]

You didn't have to do anything - I simply wanted to slit more throats.

[Jack_D.Mented]

Haha... Let's kill something... or some one... :-x

I say Lawrence (nothing personal, Smudge). But he's the most useless of the party and all he ever does is steal our crap. Let's just hurry up and waste his klepto a**.

Chia's cuteness can at least be used as a good distraction, as already demonstrated.

[chiacutie]

Jack_D.Mented wrote: Haha... Let's kill something... or some one... :-x

I say Lawrence (nothing personal, Smudge). But he's the most useless of the party and all he ever does is steal our crap. Let's just hurry up and waste his klepto a**.

Chia's cuteness can at least be used as a good distraction, as already demonstrated.

yes. yay for jack.

[Chinaren]

Jack_D.Mented wrote: Haha... Let's kill something... or some one... :-x

I say Lawrence (nothing personal, Smudge). But he's the most useless of the party and all he ever does is steal our crap. Let's just hurry up and waste his klepto a**.

Chia's cuteness can at least be used as a good distraction, as already demonstrated.

Mmm, you have a point there Jack. ~Loads gun~

[Lebrenth]

Well that settles it; someone has to die.

We're going to need another poll. So far, we have Chia, Lawrence, and Father Charles on the chopping block.... I think I'll put up the poll now, before this becomes a real mess. But isn't this sadly ironic? Someone is going to be voted off the island like some strange reality TV show!

[D-Lotus]

I object to murdering anyone. It is unreasonable, and I don't understand what this whole 'sacrifice' is about. China suggested it jokingly, and I don't think there is any good reason to do this. Especially when we could have just used the body of one of the freebooters, or something. Why would the cat be attracted to blood?

I think its too early in the story to be voting or killing people off, more so when there is no plausible reason to do it. :tdown:

[Jack_D.Mented]

Well, I think Lawrence should die.

Just question...

Can I beat him horribly first? Gotta keep the brawlin skills in shape, you know?

[Chinaren]

Jack_D.Mented wrote:
Can I beat him horribly first? Gotta keep the brawlin skills in shape, you know?

There there Jack. We can all beat him.
:shock:

[Lebrenth]

HOLD IT! Jezsharp? You aren't signed up! All you need to do is pay 70 fables and pick a character to sponsor and you can vote. It's really easy!

I recommend sponsoring anyone but poor Lawrence. He's my favorite character, you know, but it's looking like curtains for him now. I'm going to have to move the story to the Horror forum.

If you really decide you don't want to sign up, please tell me what you've voted because it isn't allowed to count. I'm afraid it wouldn't be fair to the others.... Come on! It's only 70 Fables! You've got plenty!

[Smudger]

I've been screwed over!!! I payed good fables to be in this and I'm gonna die!! :sad: , poor Lawrence, tell you what, can't someone else kill him?? Like the thingy mondy, I won't let those evil murderers kill me....Let me at least go out that way Lebrenth, I do sleep in the jungle with Slowpoke, let us die by the jungle.

[chiacutie]

Smudger wrote: I've been screwed over!!! I payed good fables to be in this and I'm gonna die!! :sad: , poor Lawrence, tell you what, can't someone else kill him?? Like the thingy mondy, I won't let those evil murderers kill me....Let me at least go out that way Lebrenth, I do sleep in the jungle with Slowpoke, let us die by the jungle.

Yes well Im voting for father charles, goody two shoes that he is. I love murdering priests! I mean, ah... Forgive me father for I have... *stab*!!! Although, just so you know, he said you might be knocked off.

Poor smudgey dear, Ill bury you with slowpoke... Or keep him alive. Your legacy will live on forever!

Hey, lebrenth... Just a bit of injustice here! You cant only give me and lawrence specifically listed as paying members to be killed. Thats just a bit... unfair.

[Lebrenth]

chiacutie wrote: Hey, lebrenth... Just a bit of injustice here! You cant only give me and lawrence specifically listed as paying members to be killed. Thats just a bit... unfair.

In traditional style, I took all suggestions and put them on a poll. I don't think I was obligated to even put "murder someone besides the above three" on the poll. I did that out of fairness. Honestly, if this poll was an argument between the the treasure hunters, they wouldn't stop and consider everyone in turn. They'd jump on the bandwagon as quick as they could against anyone but themselves. I'm just surprised that D-Lotus is the only one who objected to the murder at all.

I have no personal interest in this murder. It kills characters I've been developing, reduces the options in the story, makes at least one participant bitter towards the story, scares new participants away and I don't save any money since I pay the same amount for recovered treasure (as if making Fables had anything to do my interest in the story).

Additionally, it is my experience that a poll with too many options gets nothing done. You spread your votes out too thinly and you just get a bunch of ties.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to say my last goodbyes to Lawrence. It's not easy instrumenting a friend's death.