Re: The Vivacious Deadlock: S3G6: Round Two: BJ
01-30-2012, 06:57 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Godbot.
Sir Cedric set his glass down hard.
“So I’m headin’ to the Archwizard’s tower to rescue Princess Harmony,” Cedric continued loudly to a table of increasingly skittish-looking patrons, “when his coward of a general shows up with this huge ogre.” He spread his arms for emphasis, and everyone flinched away, which definitely meant that he was doing a good job of telling his story.
“So this ogre is swingin’ this tree trunk around, an’ I cut it to pieces – the tree, I mean – so I throw my sword away, so that it’s a fair fight.”
“What’s a sword?” one of the patrons asked nervously.
“Quiet, I’m gettin’ to the best par – what do you mean, what’s a sword? he demanded. “It’s this thing,” he said, pulling Sigrär, his red flame-print Ibanez EGEN18 electric guitar, from the strap on his back.
“What the hell is this,” he said after a pause.
“Sir, please put that away,” the bartender warned, furrowing his brow. He made a move to reach under the table.
“Who took my sword?” roared Cedric, slamming one gauntleted fist on the table and getting up from his seat. He gripped the guitar by its neck with the other hand.
“Put the guitar away,” repeated the bartender, pulling a trumpet out from under his counter and taking aim. The bargoers protested and backed away towards the other side of the room, or ducked behind the table.
“Tha’s just a horn,” Cedric retorted, absently pulling Sigrär’s strap over his shoulder and resting his hand on the strings.
The bartender put his lips to the trumpet and played a single loud, sharp note. Cedric had to shield his face and plant his feet firmly on the ground to keep from getting knocked over by the blast of pure sound. Glassware rocketed past him and shattered against the wall, and barstools clattered to the floor.
“What the hell was that?” he demanded, lowering his arms, but the bartender glared and continued playing, driving Cedric backwards step by step. His hand found his way to a little slip of orange wedged into the strap of his guitar, and he pulled it out. It was a single teardrop-shaped dragon’s scale. Strange, he thought as he curled his fingers around Sigrär’s neck and used the scale to play a single power chord. He didn’t remember picking up a dragon scale.
The air around him resonated in time to the music as his bulky armored fingers danced over Sigrär’s frets, and some invisible force simply shrugged off the blasts of sound from the bartender’s trumpet, sending them ricocheting around the room.
As the bartender paused for air, Cedric lifted his hand from the guitar for a moment and frowned at it. He strummed it a couple of times, and all of the glasses and silverware quietly hummed. He pressed in a few strings at random and played them all at once, and the resulting shockwave knocked over chairs and hurled glasses to the floor.
“Stop playing that song!” the bartender tried to yell while also playing a trumpet. Cedric’s fingers automatically found their way to the right frets, and he dropped down on one knee and played a deafening guitar solo that absorbed the blast of sound entirely in a burning aura that wasn’t quite there if you looked directly at it. The melody he was making up as he went along began to manifest and lash out at everything around him, burning gashes into anything heavy enough that it wasn’t hurled aside by the sheer power of his music.
Several patrons who were too close to Sir Cedric when the music began were hurled backwards, and one who was a bit luckier managed to get an ocarina out of his pocket and drunkenly fire a few notes at Cedric. They whistled and chirped as they zig-zagged through the air and ricocheted off of his musical barrier, striking several other people at random. The man who was closest to him snarled and lunged for an empty bottle. He turned on the ocarina player and started blowing across the lip, playing a low, droning note. The ocarina player cried out and shielded his eyes from the motes of unfocused sound coming off of the top of the bottle. He stumbled backwards and crashed into someone else, who whirled around and started pounding out a rhythm on the table in retaliation. It wasn’t clear who he was aiming at, so everyone joined in, angrily snapping spoons together and playing harmonicas at each other. (One particularly drunken bargoer just clapped his hands and stomped his feet, but that didn’t do anything.)
“What’s going on here?” barked a voice from somewhere behind him. It was clearly the voice of a guard – it had the authority of someone holding a weapon, and the strength of someone who made a career out of yelling at people and playing brass instruments.
Everyone stopped fighting just as quickly as they had started and tried to look busy in a room full of broken glass and upended furniture. Cedric took the silence as an opportunity to start another guitar solo, but he was quickly cut off.
“Drop your weapon!” commanded a guard dressed in a brightly-colored uniform with a badge on his hat and a feather just above it. As Cedric looked over his shoulder, the guard shouldered an assault trombone and sighted down its slide. A saxophonist and another trumpeter flanked him, blocking the doorway. Out of the corner of his eye, the bartender ducked behind the counter, either getting out of the line of fire or trying to avoid letting them see his face. Or both.
This was getting way too weird, decided Cedric as he looked over his shoulder, and this guitar still wasn’t a sword.
He stuck the dragon’s scale back into the guitar’s shoulder strap – he’d meant to just drop it, he vaguely realized – and rushed towards the marchingcops, gripping Sigrär’s neck with both hands and bellowing a warcry.
As the startled guards started belting out an impromptu rendition of Ghost of Steven Foster, Sigrär erupted into flames and Cedric swung it against the oncoming onslaught of music, smacking the wave of pure force off to one side. It crashed through a wall and kept going. Cedric raised Sigrär again and bellowed as he brought it down on the blaring music. The guards started playing faster and began to nervously march in place in time to the song, and Sigrär slowed to a halt in front of them, unable to get any closer. Cedric pushed against the barrier and tried to force it apart, but every moment the loud music drove him backwards another few paces.
Well, if Sigrär couldn’t get past the barrier, then it was up to him, decided Cedric, and he let the guitar drop and caught the surging melody with his hands, gritting his teeth and planting his feet firmly on the ground.
Only a dull, muted version of the song reached the knight’s ears as he dug his fingers into the center of it, stopping the music in its tracks. His hands sparked and then burst into magical flames as he roared and ripped the wall of force in half, sending a cacophonous barrage of built-up music off in either direction. The trombonist had just enough time to lower his instrument and get out a rather unprofessional “What the fu-” before Cedric’s armored fist slammed into his face, knocking him out the door and onto his back. He grabbed the officer’s two cohorts by their faces and hastily shoved them to either side, knocking them over as he bolted out the door.
“What’s going on in there?” cried the man in the apron as Cedric hurried past him. He didn’t remember that man walking into his bar.
“Not now!” said Cedric, grabbing Ivan by the arm and fleeing into the crowded marketplace. Horsegark scowled at the barman and held eye contact as he took the rope around his neck in his teeth and snapped it in two with one sharp jerk.
The marchingcops gathered up their instruments and watched as the Horse with No Name trotted off into the crowd. The leader’s trombone issued a droopy farewell.
“Don’t just stand there!” said the barman, jabbing his broom at the dazed musicians. “Clear out my bar! Do your jobs!”
“Oh, we, um,” mumbled the saxophonist, straightening his hat, and the three of them hurried off in pursuit of Sir Cedric and Ivan without another word.
“Lousy brass,” he muttered, returning to his sweeping.
---
Vala, the shamaness, stood alone on a small rocky outcropping hidden away beneath the black granite cliffs along the coast of Santa Nada, leaning heavily on her staff. She raised an ancient horn carved from bone to the grey-and-gray sky and blew, playing a single low, loud, clear note that echoed off the craggy stone cliff face behind her.
The Iron Maiden, a behemoth of a Viking warship floating off of the coast slowly turned its bow to face her, and drifted towards her for a moment before lowering a tiny speck of a rowboat off of its prow. Numerous similar crafts appeared from the other warships, while other smaller vessels just sailed directly to her.
Decorated Viking warlords climbed from the transport vessels, clad in heavy furs dotted with sequins and weathered leather armor, complete with high-heeled boots. Their long, shiny blonde hair blew perfectly in the salty breeze, but their painted expressions were grim and respectful.
“What news do you bring?” asked Svart Sabbat, the chief of Clan Thünderwölf.
“The prophecy has been averted,” Vala replied, “in part.” When no one replied, she continued. “The ‘raven-haired queen’ has appeared to me – in our very warcamp, in fact – but we have her word that she will not intervene.”
“She may yet betray us,” the warlord reminded her. “To achieve victory by herself amidst a war she is not part of, she is likely a treacherous person. Do not place trust in her words alone.”
“The queen will be accompanied by guards for as long as I see necessary,” Vala agreed. “But that is not what worries me.”
“The prophecy foretells that she has not come alone. Though we know she will not partake in the fighting, any of her accompaniment could be just as dangerous to our people as she is. It is likely that she alone was not to be the destruction of us all.”
“Perhaps we should retreat for now,” offered Sabbat. “If we cannot fight Santa Nada, we cannot wipe each other out.”
“I fear that letting the others go unchecked would be nearly as bad as allowing the queen to proceed with her plans. There is a mysterious power about her, unlike our own – and we do not know how many warriors have appeared with her, or what they are capable of.”
“I fear for our people,” she said darkly. “The only solution may yet be to seek out her companions.”
“And kill them all.”
Sir Cedric set his glass down hard.
“So I’m headin’ to the Archwizard’s tower to rescue Princess Harmony,” Cedric continued loudly to a table of increasingly skittish-looking patrons, “when his coward of a general shows up with this huge ogre.” He spread his arms for emphasis, and everyone flinched away, which definitely meant that he was doing a good job of telling his story.
“So this ogre is swingin’ this tree trunk around, an’ I cut it to pieces – the tree, I mean – so I throw my sword away, so that it’s a fair fight.”
“What’s a sword?” one of the patrons asked nervously.
“Quiet, I’m gettin’ to the best par – what do you mean, what’s a sword? he demanded. “It’s this thing,” he said, pulling Sigrär, his red flame-print Ibanez EGEN18 electric guitar, from the strap on his back.
“What the hell is this,” he said after a pause.
“Sir, please put that away,” the bartender warned, furrowing his brow. He made a move to reach under the table.
“Who took my sword?” roared Cedric, slamming one gauntleted fist on the table and getting up from his seat. He gripped the guitar by its neck with the other hand.
“Put the guitar away,” repeated the bartender, pulling a trumpet out from under his counter and taking aim. The bargoers protested and backed away towards the other side of the room, or ducked behind the table.
“Tha’s just a horn,” Cedric retorted, absently pulling Sigrär’s strap over his shoulder and resting his hand on the strings.
The bartender put his lips to the trumpet and played a single loud, sharp note. Cedric had to shield his face and plant his feet firmly on the ground to keep from getting knocked over by the blast of pure sound. Glassware rocketed past him and shattered against the wall, and barstools clattered to the floor.
“What the hell was that?” he demanded, lowering his arms, but the bartender glared and continued playing, driving Cedric backwards step by step. His hand found his way to a little slip of orange wedged into the strap of his guitar, and he pulled it out. It was a single teardrop-shaped dragon’s scale. Strange, he thought as he curled his fingers around Sigrär’s neck and used the scale to play a single power chord. He didn’t remember picking up a dragon scale.
The air around him resonated in time to the music as his bulky armored fingers danced over Sigrär’s frets, and some invisible force simply shrugged off the blasts of sound from the bartender’s trumpet, sending them ricocheting around the room.
As the bartender paused for air, Cedric lifted his hand from the guitar for a moment and frowned at it. He strummed it a couple of times, and all of the glasses and silverware quietly hummed. He pressed in a few strings at random and played them all at once, and the resulting shockwave knocked over chairs and hurled glasses to the floor.
“Stop playing that song!” the bartender tried to yell while also playing a trumpet. Cedric’s fingers automatically found their way to the right frets, and he dropped down on one knee and played a deafening guitar solo that absorbed the blast of sound entirely in a burning aura that wasn’t quite there if you looked directly at it. The melody he was making up as he went along began to manifest and lash out at everything around him, burning gashes into anything heavy enough that it wasn’t hurled aside by the sheer power of his music.
Several patrons who were too close to Sir Cedric when the music began were hurled backwards, and one who was a bit luckier managed to get an ocarina out of his pocket and drunkenly fire a few notes at Cedric. They whistled and chirped as they zig-zagged through the air and ricocheted off of his musical barrier, striking several other people at random. The man who was closest to him snarled and lunged for an empty bottle. He turned on the ocarina player and started blowing across the lip, playing a low, droning note. The ocarina player cried out and shielded his eyes from the motes of unfocused sound coming off of the top of the bottle. He stumbled backwards and crashed into someone else, who whirled around and started pounding out a rhythm on the table in retaliation. It wasn’t clear who he was aiming at, so everyone joined in, angrily snapping spoons together and playing harmonicas at each other. (One particularly drunken bargoer just clapped his hands and stomped his feet, but that didn’t do anything.)
“What’s going on here?” barked a voice from somewhere behind him. It was clearly the voice of a guard – it had the authority of someone holding a weapon, and the strength of someone who made a career out of yelling at people and playing brass instruments.
Everyone stopped fighting just as quickly as they had started and tried to look busy in a room full of broken glass and upended furniture. Cedric took the silence as an opportunity to start another guitar solo, but he was quickly cut off.
“Drop your weapon!” commanded a guard dressed in a brightly-colored uniform with a badge on his hat and a feather just above it. As Cedric looked over his shoulder, the guard shouldered an assault trombone and sighted down its slide. A saxophonist and another trumpeter flanked him, blocking the doorway. Out of the corner of his eye, the bartender ducked behind the counter, either getting out of the line of fire or trying to avoid letting them see his face. Or both.
This was getting way too weird, decided Cedric as he looked over his shoulder, and this guitar still wasn’t a sword.
He stuck the dragon’s scale back into the guitar’s shoulder strap – he’d meant to just drop it, he vaguely realized – and rushed towards the marchingcops, gripping Sigrär’s neck with both hands and bellowing a warcry.
As the startled guards started belting out an impromptu rendition of Ghost of Steven Foster, Sigrär erupted into flames and Cedric swung it against the oncoming onslaught of music, smacking the wave of pure force off to one side. It crashed through a wall and kept going. Cedric raised Sigrär again and bellowed as he brought it down on the blaring music. The guards started playing faster and began to nervously march in place in time to the song, and Sigrär slowed to a halt in front of them, unable to get any closer. Cedric pushed against the barrier and tried to force it apart, but every moment the loud music drove him backwards another few paces.
Well, if Sigrär couldn’t get past the barrier, then it was up to him, decided Cedric, and he let the guitar drop and caught the surging melody with his hands, gritting his teeth and planting his feet firmly on the ground.
Only a dull, muted version of the song reached the knight’s ears as he dug his fingers into the center of it, stopping the music in its tracks. His hands sparked and then burst into magical flames as he roared and ripped the wall of force in half, sending a cacophonous barrage of built-up music off in either direction. The trombonist had just enough time to lower his instrument and get out a rather unprofessional “What the fu-” before Cedric’s armored fist slammed into his face, knocking him out the door and onto his back. He grabbed the officer’s two cohorts by their faces and hastily shoved them to either side, knocking them over as he bolted out the door.
“What’s going on in there?” cried the man in the apron as Cedric hurried past him. He didn’t remember that man walking into his bar.
“Not now!” said Cedric, grabbing Ivan by the arm and fleeing into the crowded marketplace. Horsegark scowled at the barman and held eye contact as he took the rope around his neck in his teeth and snapped it in two with one sharp jerk.
The marchingcops gathered up their instruments and watched as the Horse with No Name trotted off into the crowd. The leader’s trombone issued a droopy farewell.
“Don’t just stand there!” said the barman, jabbing his broom at the dazed musicians. “Clear out my bar! Do your jobs!”
“Oh, we, um,” mumbled the saxophonist, straightening his hat, and the three of them hurried off in pursuit of Sir Cedric and Ivan without another word.
“Lousy brass,” he muttered, returning to his sweeping.
---
Vala, the shamaness, stood alone on a small rocky outcropping hidden away beneath the black granite cliffs along the coast of Santa Nada, leaning heavily on her staff. She raised an ancient horn carved from bone to the grey-and-gray sky and blew, playing a single low, loud, clear note that echoed off the craggy stone cliff face behind her.
The Iron Maiden, a behemoth of a Viking warship floating off of the coast slowly turned its bow to face her, and drifted towards her for a moment before lowering a tiny speck of a rowboat off of its prow. Numerous similar crafts appeared from the other warships, while other smaller vessels just sailed directly to her.
Decorated Viking warlords climbed from the transport vessels, clad in heavy furs dotted with sequins and weathered leather armor, complete with high-heeled boots. Their long, shiny blonde hair blew perfectly in the salty breeze, but their painted expressions were grim and respectful.
“What news do you bring?” asked Svart Sabbat, the chief of Clan Thünderwölf.
“The prophecy has been averted,” Vala replied, “in part.” When no one replied, she continued. “The ‘raven-haired queen’ has appeared to me – in our very warcamp, in fact – but we have her word that she will not intervene.”
“She may yet betray us,” the warlord reminded her. “To achieve victory by herself amidst a war she is not part of, she is likely a treacherous person. Do not place trust in her words alone.”
“The queen will be accompanied by guards for as long as I see necessary,” Vala agreed. “But that is not what worries me.”
“The prophecy foretells that she has not come alone. Though we know she will not partake in the fighting, any of her accompaniment could be just as dangerous to our people as she is. It is likely that she alone was not to be the destruction of us all.”
“Perhaps we should retreat for now,” offered Sabbat. “If we cannot fight Santa Nada, we cannot wipe each other out.”
“I fear that letting the others go unchecked would be nearly as bad as allowing the queen to proceed with her plans. There is a mysterious power about her, unlike our own – and we do not know how many warriors have appeared with her, or what they are capable of.”
“I fear for our people,” she said darkly. “The only solution may yet be to seek out her companions.”
“And kill them all.”