CourageWolf Test Thread

[Tassadar]

Re: CourageWolf Test Thread

Cora blinked at the vanished woman, but her gaze instinctively turned toward the cart. At the possessed girls words, Cora snarled, "As if!" Stretching out her hand, Cora closed her fist and attempted to bind the strange being, cutting off their power.

Spoiler

Binding X = 15, which is 4 points over her ceiling for a total of 19 EP and 4 HP. DC 75 resistance check or all of her powers and spells get turned off, and she can't move or make any actions.

 

[Courage Wolf]

Re: CourageWolf Test Thread

Status

Spoiler

HP: 66 EP: 1 PP: 50 Status: Very Tired

Rolls

Spoiler

Casting: Success!

Astral chains erupted into existence around the woman And the creature, slowly but surely pulling the shadow in the air back into its current vessel. But as she did, a chorus of voices entered her mind as her soul made contact with its. "What will you do.... Why do you fight.... How will you bear the shame....
You cannot kill me as you are.... There is no hope here.... You're weak.... On your last legs.... only Torment awaits...."

If it had sounded unnatural in the outside air, it sounded downright painful in her head and Cora was assaulted by these words and more for every moment she was in contact with It. The thing wearing the woman like a suit seemed amused and licked its lips, standing there and staring at her with baleful eyes that burned with a fire not of this world. If Cora was to ever have a chance, it was probably now...

 

[Tassadar]

Re: CourageWolf Test Thread

Seeing the being bound in her astral chains and feeling her energy waning, Coradivik smirked right back at the possessed girl. Running up, Cora grabbed two of the captive women from the back of the cart, picking them more or less at random, and then turned to quickly depart. The voices in the back of her mind were ignored, for the moment, and she quickly departed with nary a second glance, released her hold on the abomination before her energy ran out.

 

[Courage Wolf]

Re: CourageWolf Test Thread

Whatever the hell it was, let her go, content with the amount of Captives IT had, letting Cora take her paltry and sad prize compared to what the abomination had taken. Cackling after her, She couldn't shake the voice until she was far away indeed, tearing through the night. "You'll never be free of me~ I'll Hunt you until the end of time, lurking in your nightmares... We've touched souls, you and I, and this will only end with your death.... Or mine.... "

And like that, the voice was silent. Cora was still some ways away from her home, and relative safety, but given the creatures promise to hound her, stopping was probably a bad idea. Even with her abilities, Cora was certain that the creature, whatever the hell it was, was stronger at night, under the moon. She didn't know how she knew, but it was there, like an itch at the back of her mind. It was very possible that they had touched eachother, using their spirits to fight, their souls touching for a moment, sharing parts of their spirits in the middle of combat and the thrill of the Hunt. Whatever it was, Cora was certain she had made a powerful enemy this night....

 

[Tassadar]

Re: CourageWolf Test Thread

"Stupid ghost," Cora muttered to herself as she hauled her captives away from the site of the battle. All of that hard work, gone! Well, not all of it. She glanced irritably at the two captives she'd managed to secure. She briefly considered not returning to her lair, but after a moment's thought decided that it would be best to return to the cave she'd found on a cliffside anyway. It was easily one of the safest places she'd found, and after webbing off even the smallest passageways she'd found the entrance chamber was nigh impregnable by anything but creatures that could fly and creatures that could climb walls. She could put her new toys up in webs and have a well deserved rest after the night's debacle.

 

[Courage Wolf]

Re: CourageWolf Test Thread

Through the twisted and shadowed landscape to the cliff that held her current home, the dark entrance hidden by the way the light of the moon played on the rocks and cast all but the merest sliver of it's existence in darkness. Up the cliff with a natural agility unmatched by other creatures, Cora carried her prizes with no effort whatsoever and entered her domicile to rest and recover. The battle had left her drained, but thankfully uninjured, and she hadn't walked away empty handed either, but something was nagging at the back of her mind still, as if the encounter and the creature involved was still dogging her heels, which was impossible.

Setting her captives in a large web, What happened next was Cora's call. The women she had taken were still broken and mindless from their encounter before she had arrived and made no moves to resist, not even squirming in their bonds. Simple movements could be seen underneath the silk, but nothing that would signal them trying to break free. In the shadows of her lair, Cora could rest safely and her prey was as trapped as she was safe in the secluded cavern she had found and made her own.

 

[Tassadar]

Re: CourageWolf Test Thread

Though unable to shake the vague feeling that she was even then being observed, Coradivik went straight to her lair without hesitation. If the ghost wanted to stalk her, then there was little she could do physically that might shake it from her trail. More supernatural methods would be required to deal with such a being.

When she reached her cliffside home, Coradivik carefully climbed in with her two new captives and placed them up into a couple of webs she kept around for just this sort of occasion. She bound them loosely in silk in order to ensure that they didn't wander off and then settled down into the nook in which she normally sat. She hadn't managed to catch a male, but she still contained enough eggs to fill the two women with some of her children. Even so, she had had a far more trying and far less successful day than she'd expected, and resting in order to regain her strength was Cora's first priority.

 

[Courage Wolf]

Re: CourageWolf Test Thread

Sleep came easily, but not rest as nightmares hounded Cora across a twisted and hellbent landscape. As she looked around, all the arachne could see was a dead and gnarled forest of towering black trees, the skeletons of there many branches extending into a grey sky lit by not one, but three moons, all differnt sizes that all bore the same dark crimson glow, bathing the ground in soft liquid blood that never abated, the wind occasionally tearing through the trees like the unanswered cry of the long dead...

There was no name for such a place, but she new beyond amy shadow of a doubt that this was the true home of the creature she had met. She could feel its presence permeating the very air she breathed, far stronger here then before, and as if beckoned by her presence the creature appeared before jer...

"So we meet again... as we are destined to until the balance shifts. Welcome to my home..." She stood there before Cora, radiating power on a level the arachne had never comprehended, a god here in its home, its body or essence trapped on or in her world. "What will you do... you cannot stay here, and this place is what i truly strive for, the power to go home, and i will not stop until I do so. But i find you mortals so... Delicious and tender, something this place hasn't had for a very long time.... a bountiful hunting ground and fellow predators baying for blood in the night....."

She appeared in the same for Cora had met the other night, staring up into the moonlight longingly, sadness touching her features as she waited for an answer...

 

[Tassadar]

Re: CourageWolf Test Thread

Cora's eyes shot open to behold a world not her own, and for a moment the arachne was at a loss. Where was she? How had she come to be here? Before her questions could be puzzled out properly, she felt the apparition that had attacked her before, and within moments the being had appeared before her. It wore the guise of the girl who's throat the spider had slit the day before, and that suggested that this particular daemon didn't have a preferred form of its own. That might be significant... Or it might not. For a moment, Coradivik eyed her self-proclaimed enemy silently.

She couldn't attack the thing here. She was in it's domain here, and would face the same disadvantage as it had felt in the mortal world. Given the relative power difference between the two of them, it was not a contest that the arachne wanted to try her hand at any time soon. "Why?" she said simply, and after a brief pause in which she awaited an answer from the strange being who seemed to long for the moon, the arachne continued; "Why must we be foes? I am no more a mortal than you are. Neither age nor disease shall lay me low, and when my earthly form shatters I will go to the side of my queen, to serve her in eternity as I have in the mortal realm. As far as I can tell, our goals are not mutually exclusive.

"You seek beings to feed from, I seek hosts and genes with which to propagate my kind. You and I both know that you need not kill yours any more than I do. It is inefficient, sloppy, and ultimately harmful to your goals to not keep living victims. So, why do you harass me creature? I have done you no wrong beyond competing for the same prey."

 

[Courage Wolf]

Re: CourageWolf Test Thread

The creature let out a low chuckle that turned into an unearthly roar of laughter that caused the world around her to ripple and sway. "Nothing!? You have done Nothing? Listen to yourself speak. You attacked me first Mortal..." it let the word Mortal drip off of it's tongue like some kind of plague bearing acid, smirking before speaking again. "No.... You chained me... if even for a moment, making me taste the foulness of the creature I possessed by forcing my power to recoil back into it's hideous body. Never again. If you so desire to return to the side of your Queen in death, then by all means, rush to meet me. But you started this elegant dance of death and decay and you will see it through, Even if I have to hound you for eternity!" She screamed like a banshee, each word cracking the world a little more, shattering the fragile place they were both standing in like thousands of shards of glass that fell into the void to disappear, roughly shoving the Arachne from her sleep whether she liked it or not. A declaration had been made...

Cora would find her captives as before upon waking, still bound, still helpless, all well with the world as the sun started to crest the horizon, early morning making itself known to the sequestered spider woman with the sounds of starlings chirping near her lair's entrance. All was well... Everything was Normal...

 

[Tassadar]

Re: CourageWolf Test Thread

"You initiated hostilities first by attempting to steal my rightfully taken quarry!" Cora countered evenly, "I, as is my right, attempted to prevent you from doing as much." Letting out a sigh as the daemon decided to continue this charade, Cora simply cut the thing off mid sentence, around when it said the word Queen; "If you are dead set on continuing a hostile relationship, then you will simply be disposed of. My Queen will be glad of a meal, even if it is so minor as you, and when I feed your essence to her as a sacrifice she will likely provide me a reward far exceeding any harm you can cause to me."

The scream proved to be... Irritating, to say the least, but before long she was shunted from her sleep and back into the waking world. The arachne's eyes snapped open with a frown, and after observing her surroundings for a moment and declaring them to be normal she slunk out of her nook and observed her captives. They would have to be fed of course, as all living things needed, and that meant fruit gathering. She was hardly in a mood to egg either of them at the moment anyway, not after her dreams, and as such she gave the two women a brief glance over before climbing out of her cave and going to a grove of fruit trees that she knew of in the valley beneath her home. As always, she was as silent as a ghost and moved among the trees both swiftly and almost invisibly, being careful not to attract any unwanted attention.

(Did Cora get any experience for the kills she got before mr ghost man showed up?)

 

[Courage Wolf]

Re: CourageWolf Test Thread

Spoiler

HP:66 EP:44 PP:50 Status: Fine

And peaceful it stayed. The captives were sleeping peacefully, as if their position didn't bother them at all, and in truth it didn't their minds still driven from them from the ordeal. As for anything else, As Cora poked her head out of her little hidey hole, the only thing that assaulted her was an angry squirrel that had been looking for nuts and before she could even react, the fuzzy little ninja had nailed her in the forehead with an acorn. Chittering infuriated, it quickly paled and scampered away as she looked at the offending creature. There was really nothing to worry about, but there was something interesting. If Cora took the time to think on the dream, or her new enemy, she would always have a rough idea of what direction it lay, and roughly how far. It was far from exact, but it wouldn't be a stretch to assume that the creature had the same bond. It was a declaration of war between two apex predators who were always aware of each other to a degree in a very animal sense.

All that aside, people did need to eat, and so did she. And breakfast WAS the most important meal of the day after all. Although the sun had initially been blinding upon her exit of the cave, Cora found her eyes adjusting quickly, and the beauty of the surrounding wildlife was spread out before her. Nature had always provided much as her Queen did, and it was time to reap the bounty of both.

Spoiler

Experience Get! 6! (4 for the fight, 1 for each captive you managed to actually get away with ^-^)

 

[Tassadar]

Re: CourageWolf Test Thread

Cora scowled furiously at the tiny mammal as it pelted her in the face with an acorn, but before she could teach the diminutive creature its proper place it took off, and she decided that her dignity would be better salvaged by ignoring it than by chasing after it. Instead, she started down into the valley in search of something nice to eat, moving from the cliffside to the trees and then heading off to the fruit groves in order to collect some for her captives. A small sack made of webbing would be used to carry them, but even as she collected food for her prey Coradivik kept her eyes peeled for some prey of her own. A nice wolf or deer or hunting cat, common creatures in the jungle, would serve as an adequate meal for her, and given her newly established link with the being that she had encountered in her hunt the night before, Cora felt that she might need her strength.

 

[Courage Wolf]

Re: CourageWolf Test Thread

Status

Spoiler

HP:66 EP:44 PP:50 Status: Fine

Cora had not troubles whatsoever getting down from her perch, but hunting was another problem entirely, and despite how much food there should have been, the amount of large game in the area was far smaller then she remembered, the jungle eerily quiet for early morning. It wasn't all for nothing however. Shortly after acquiring the fruit she was after for her own guests, she found something that would be a suitable meal, if not a very appetising one, unless she liked cooked meat far more then she did a fresh kill.

Left roasting over a fire was a large spit of meat, it smelled like boar but whoever had left it here had left in quite the hurry, scuff marks and what was basically most of an intact campsight left here without any attempt to break the camp itself. Near the fire was the broken remnants of a thick spear and a long bow, the wood for both weapons snapped and the pieces discarded in the dust.

 

[Tassadar]

Re: CourageWolf Test Thread

Peeking into the campsite from the cover of the trees, Cora gazed at the flame and the meat hanging over it curiously. She had no problem at all in taking cooked meat, though she didn't have a preference for it over the raw meat that she usually ate, and pride had no place in the mind of a predator. What sparked her curiosity was why the place had seemingly been abandoned, and why there were no signs of bodies in the area. The broken weapons suggested a struggle, but there were no signs of any living... Or formerly living creatures. Moving slowly and cautiously, Coradivik made a circle around the encampment, searching for clues while remaining in the cover of the trees.

 

[Courage Wolf]

Re: CourageWolf Test Thread

After making not one, but several passes, Cora finally noticed something out of place. On one of the trees, near the ground and facing the campsight, were three large slashes, as if from a set of claws, and the only place to have any dried blood on it at all. The campsight itself was as barren and unmoving as ever but the Arachne did notice something shining on the ground as the light from the sun that filtered through the trees caught it at certain angles.

 

[Tassadar]

Re: CourageWolf Test Thread

Cora paused as she spotted the slashes on the tree, wondering what they might signify. That was the first trace of blood that she'd found, and she circled the thing slowly. They weren't dissimilar from her own claw marks, making her wonder if one of her kin was in the area, poaching her game, but she knew all too well that there were plenty of other monsters loose in the dense jungles that might leave such marks. Still, few other creatures could pull off an attack such that they didn't even leave marks of struggle. If it was one of her kin, then Cora could simply deal with her as was appropriate when the time came.

She spotted something shiny a moment later, and the intrigued arachne tilted her head to the side and headed for it, appearing completely oblivious even though she was training her senses in all directions.

(Full defense, acquire shiny thing.)

 

[Courage Wolf]

Re: CourageWolf Test Thread

The thing that had caught the glare from the light of the sun turned out to be what appeared to be a shard from a wide blade, and not any make that Cora recognized. It was good steel, but whatever had struck it had been sharp enough to sheer it completely off the end of whatever blade it had belonged to. From her position there, examining the blade, and training her senses, her nose finally caught something that made even her have to stop and reel for a moment as it assaulted her senses. The smell of death, rot... Looking up, higher in the trees then before, higher then she had been traveling, she saw them.

The breeze before that had suddenly died down had hidden the scent from her and looking up, she saw the corpses of 4 people. If this was the work of a monster, then it wasn't one she had heard of before. The bodies were strung up like trophies, too far damaged to tell even what gender they were, and they were suspended not by silk, but by thick braided rope. The rest of the blade that Cora was holding was imbedded in the trunk of the tree they were hanging from, and was what was anchoring the rope.

 

[Tassadar]

Re: CourageWolf Test Thread

"Oh.... Well then," Cora muttered to herself, dropping the shard of the weapon that she'd discovered as she gazes up at the corpses hanging from the tree. They'd been mutilated, quite badly in fact, and Cora let out a sigh at the waste. The sight of it hardly bothered her, as she regularly fed upon the remains of the dead herself, but this... They hadn't even been killed for a purpose, or at least not one that was readily apparent. Mortal work then, and apparently an extremely cruel mortal at that.

Cora wrinkled her nose and scowled for a moment, but then turned about and took the meat that had been set to cook over the fire. Her kind had no rituals regarding the dead, and she didn't care enough for the fate of these creatures to even spend the time to cut them down. Something was poaching in her territory, and that was quite irksome, but she hadn't found any trace of them in the camp, nor was she enough of a tracker to bother trying to hunt them down at the moment. All the same, she got back up into the trees as quickly as possible, hauling her prize back to her cavernous home unless she spotted or heard something interesting.

 

[Courage Wolf]

Re: CourageWolf Test Thread

The free meal aside, Cora felt the distinct presence of her new stalker amidst the corpses, like the act had left a stain within the blood as she made her way back to her temporary home, her two charges still docile and compliant within their binds. She was as free as ever to do what she wanted, but at least she had a hunch as to what was poaching. And now how it enjoyed the act, with efficient cruelty and apparently a flair for making a show of it's kills...