The Opulent Quarrel - Round One: Mademoiselle Primfel's

Eight figures awoke to find themselves in an unfamiliar drawing room. The décor of this room was old fashioned reminiscent of a Victorian study, except where it wasn’t. For example one wall was almost entirely taken up by a bookshelf filled with the latest big budget video games, a large collection of well-thumbed manga and in one corner a selection of huge heavy books thick with dust; as unread as the day they were purchased. A well-polished silver skull served as a rather prominent bookend. The other wall was dominated by an enormous portrait; a balding man wearing a fedora and waistcoat and sporting a humourless judgemental frown.

The eight extremely disorientated figures had just about enough time to discover their incapability to move and perhaps take in a little of the décor before a door opened and the man from the portrait walked through; an e-cigarette in his mouth and a phalanx of blank-eyed girls in revealing French maid outfits at his back.

“Welcome my honoured guests to le Opulent Quarrel. You’re probably wondering who I am and what is happening. Just relax, it will all be explained in time.” At this point he took a seat on the sofa between two helplessly immobilized scantily clad young ladies. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance ladies; you may call me The Sophisticate.” He reached out and took the hand of one of the girls and gave it a gentlemanly peck. If he wasn’t already seated he would almost certainly have offered a small bow.

“The purpose for which I have brought you here today is combat; a spectacle that we in the Grandmaster community like to call a Grand Battle. You’ll be whisked off to wondrous amazing worlds of adventure and intrigue and there you’ll battle amongst yourselves until one of you has emerged victorious.” He grinned widely. “It’ll be great, I understand it might not sound particularly fun, but think of it as an adventure; a vacation from your humdrum little lives.”

The Sophisticate looked around the rough circle of immobilized battlers (four buff guys with rugged beards, winning smiles and gleaming polished armour and four girls looking uncomfortable in unrealistic impractical skimpy armour) hoping to see the glimmer of excitement in their eyes. He did not.

At this point one of The Sophisticate’s dead-eyed maids stepped up and whispered furtively into his ear. His grin dropped immediately and before he had time to react, the doors opened again and a woman stepped through. Her hair was dyed bright magenta, undercut on one side and swept over on the other. She was wearing a jacket, jeans and huge heavy boots, the kind that looked designed to trek through the countryside.

“Hey baby bro, I’m not gonna lie I’m feeling a little offended rn that you didn’t want to invite me to your little get together.” With barely a pause she climbed over the couch opposite to where The Sophisticate had taken a seat and inserted herself between a pair of bearded swordsmen. “Nice to meet you, I’m Tiff.” She watched the motionless swordsmen, their panicked eyes the only indicators that they were not incredibly detailed statues, and frowned.

“How many times must I tell you not to come into my dimension before you finally understand?” The Sophisticate snapped. “This is wilful and repeated violation of my privacy. How would you like it if I were to waltz into your-”

“Hold up a hot minute, what’s the deal?” Tiff indicated the paralysed battlers. The slightest hint of a smile crept across her lips. “Are you having a Battle?”

“That… would be my business and none of yours.” The Sophisticate retorted. “And whether I am or I am not it does not negate the fact that-”

Tiff laughed. “You’re joking right?” She asked. “This is your battle? Four beardswords versus four pretty girls who I seriously hope for your sake were wearing that terrible terrible armour before you scooped them up into your clutches.”

“There’s nothing wrong with their armour!” The Sophisticate replied indignantly.

“There’s everything wrong with everything.” Tiff snickered. “I always knew any battle you tried to host would be an epic failure but even I’m impressed at just how skeevy this is bro.”

“Hah, as though you are the expert on battles.” The Sophisticate sneered. “I bet you don’t even know the first thing about Grand Battling.”

“How much do you wanna bet?” Tiff asked.

“I’m afraid that that was simply a figure of speech, you can rest assured I don’t intend to waste my time by humouring you on this.”

“I knew it. You always were a chicken when it came down to it.”

“Fine!” The Sophisticate exclaimed. “If you’re so damn sure you can do a better job I invite you to do so.”

“Okay first things first we’re gonna need new battlers.” Tiff said. “No offence guys but you are just not cutting it for me. Sorry for the inconvenience.” With a flick of her hands the immobile former contestants had vanished back into the worlds they came from.

“If you will recall I invited you to run a better battle than me if you felt yourself capable, not to hijack my battle and dismiss my painstakingly chosen contestants.” The Sophisticate said.

“Oh stop whining, I’m doing you a favour here.” Tiff replied. “You and me; we’re a dream team. Me with all my wonderful qualities, and you with your… um… presence, we’ll make this battle a battle to remember.”

“Yeah, I’m sure it will be memorable at the very least.”

SpoilerShow

EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT A GRAND BATTLE IS BUT IT’S A TRADITION TO EXPLAIN SO I WILL
Grand Battles are a collaborative competitive writing exercise wherein usually eight sometimes more sometimes less are whisked away from their lives to do battle for the amusement of omniscient bastards. The focus is not on having fites so much as good interactions with other characters, worldbuilding or just good writing in general. Every round the worst written character (or more usually the character whose writer who has gone most inactive) is eliminated and the characters are shunted off to a different corner of universe to fight again.

THE GRAND BATTLE RULEBOOK

• Play nice.
  
• In theory you can reserve a post and then everyone has to wait until you’ve finished before they can post, but battles have been so slow that maybe this isn’t necessary.
  
• A new concept that might not catch on but why not try suggesting it: if you’re writing a post and you think it’ll take a while but you don’t want to hold everyone up, you can post an ‘intention to post’ and that’s an indication you’re writing something and that people may want to check with you before posting things, especially if it’s something involving your character. Like a soft reserve I guess.

IX WHY ARE YOU MAKING A NEW BATTLE?
Lankie talked me into it.

(This is a lie we talked each other into it)

NOTES SPECIFICALLY PERTAINING TO THIS BATTLE
Me and Lankie wanted a new battle to happen but at the same time we wanted a new battle we could post in and because neither of us was willing to step back just host the battle and let the other participate, I thought we could try the democratic approach. We’re all experienced battle writers I’m sure we can agree to things as a community. Assuming we’re gonna get far enough to get to an elimination we agree upon such things by group consensus.

APPLICATIONS
I’m not exactly expecting a flood of profiles, so we’ll go with the first come first serve policy. If we’re not full in say a week we’ll go with whatever we have no matter how many that is. I’m willing to stretch to a nine/ten person battle if you’re enthusiastic and we’re already up to eight participants, just hit me up with a message to make sure we don’t start the battle without you. If we get more than that I retain the rights to adjust this process to be more selective but that’s probably not gonna happen, I’m just covering my bases here.

THE PROFILE FORM:
(you can rearrange these categories into whatever order you like if it helps the flow of your profile or if you just feel like fucking with me)

Username: It’s a tradition.
Name: I really like the name Cassandra but you can call your character whatever you like.
Gender: Is a social construct.
Species: For bonus points include all their taxonomic ranks.
Colour: Choose the most obnoxious series of tags you can come up with to surround your character’s posts.
Description: A physical and mental description of your character and their behaviour. If they’re wearing a mask you’re automatically in.
Items/Abilities: The Sophisticate is willing to provide useless sexy armour if you haven’t brought your own.
Biography: Tell me all about your character, but not, you know, all about your character. I don’t have all day you know.

CAST:

1. Ixcaliber - Lady Wilhemina Pell - #412A42
   
2. Lankie - Wren - #2F4F4F
   
3. Dragon Fogel - Damse - #556B2F
   
4. Schazer - Gunzelurge - #778799
   
5. Sanzh - Georgia Kyuume-chan Sakura (and Sorry) - #FF96CA
   
6. AgentBlue - Cassandra Devin - #4444AA
   
7. Solaris - Des La Ryuje - #800000
   
8. Chimney and Forge - Völsung and The Verdant Queen - #FF0000 and #80C020
   
9. Sai - Gurska Karr - #800000
   
10. Mirdini - Althyr Almael (or Alex 'Hotshot' Alameda) - #EE7600